'I love the man': Trump supporters celebrate government change

Donald Trump took the oath of office and stepped to the podium facing the west lawn of the Capitol and look out onto a sea of humanity - mostly supporters. Sixteen minutes later he completed his inaugural speech with a campaign slogan, which thousands in the crowd chanted with him: "And yes, together we will make America great again."
Sandra Edwards, 46, a nurse from Wytheville, Virginia, was among the hundreds of thousands attending Trump's inauguration last Friday on the National Mall in Washington.
"I love the man," she said. "I'm really excited he shares my desire to create jobs and bring industries back."
She voiced opposition to illegal immigration and the health care reforms under Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama.
"I'm sick of the [Obama] administration. By the time you elect a businessman with no political experience, a reality TV dude, I think I'm not the only one who's tired."
Moments after the conclusion of the inaugural ceremony, a Marine helicopter lifted off from the Capitol grounds, with Obama aboard, bound with his family for a post-presidential holiday in California.
A man in a black top hat waved exaggeratedly at the helicopter as it rose.
"Goodbye Obama," Erik Laykin shouted. "Have fun in Palm Springs. Stay a long time." Laykin, a cybercrime investigator who led a group of Trump supporters in Los Angeles, said that his collapsible top hat - a well-worn, beaver-fur Chestergate from 1880 - was "in tribute to our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln."
Obama, though a Democrat, was like Lincoln - president from 1861-65 - from Illinois.
"He's a very nice man and very brilliant, and I have a lot of respect for him," Laykin said. "But I disagree with his policies, so I'm glad to see him fly away."
Trump's inaugural speech continued his populist campaign rhetoric, and he vowed: "From this day forward, it's going to be only America first."
Trump was "speaking to his base," Laykin said. "There's a bit of a counter-revolution going on."
One woman in the audience raved about first lady Melania Trump's light blue ensemble. "Blue's the new colour this year, everyone - corn-flower blue," she told women around her.
Jim Brady, 62, of Millburn, New Jersey, said he had come to a presidential inauguration for the first time because of "eight years of disappointment."
He said that support in middle America for Trump, a Manhattan real estate mogul, was a reaction to the cultural dominance of the East and West coasts.
"Fifteen years ago we made cars in Detroit and you couldn't drink the water in Mexico. Now they make cars in Mexico and you can't drink the water in Detroit," said Brady, who owns a tax accounting firm.
He said that Trump "is gonna make it work. He doesn't need this job."
While Trump was reciting the oath of office, a handful of protesters in blue sweatshirts stood up on their chairs in a ticketed section about 50 metres from the podium and in unison shouted the preamble to the US Constitution.
Trump supporters around them began shouting them down with a chant of "USA."
Moments later, as Trump began his speech, the demonstrators were escorted out, while a grey-haired man yelled vulgarities at them and a man in a wheelchair shouted "Don't come back."
Sheila Taylor, a sommelier from Las Vegas, Nevada, sat a few rows away.
She said that she came to the inauguration to honour her aunt, a seamstress who worked on the inaugural gown worn by then-first lady Nancy Reagan in 1981. The dress is now in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution.
Taylor supported Jeb Bush in the primaries but embraced Trump when he captured the Republican nomination.
"I'm a supporter of change, positive change - and job creation and freedom and our military," she said.
"We need to get grounded and create jobs. I think it's time that the middle-class rises again."