Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017 was not what Hillary Clinton had imagined it to be. When she took her seat at the podium, accompanying her husband, former President Bill Clinton, she was greeted with jeers from Trump supporters in the crowd and chants of, “Lock her up!” The display was thoroughly lacking in magnanimity but it did illustrate that the bitterness of the campaign yet lingers and is coming from both sides. Hillary supporters rioted the night before. Supporters of the new president confined themselves to making rude chants.
What must the would-be first woman president of the United States have been thinking when she watched as that man took the oath of office and then gave his inaugural address to the roaring cheers of the crowd?
Did she shut her eyes and imagine an alternate reality, in which she was taking the oath and Bill and Chelsea looked on with pride and then gave her inaugural address to give her agenda for the future of the United States? Did she imagine her receiving the ovation of the crowds, the award and culmination of a lifetime of striving, with sins and crimes great and small, people destroyed, rules flouted, on her way to the pinnacle of power?
Now she had to watch that sexist, that bully, that rude man take the prize that by right should have been hers. She had to bear the scorn of the great unwashed as her opponent got all of the accolades. The bitterness must be too great to bear.
She also must be wondering, even now, will President Trump follow through on his threat made during one of the debates and have her prosecuted?
She is accused of a number of crimes that should she be convicted would put her behind bars for the rest of her life. To go to prison, to be ordered about and have to live cheek to jowl with people she would not even deign to acknowledge on the outside would be final humiliation. Hillary Clinton must be praying that Donald Trump, president of the United States, will show her mercy and allow her to slink away to spend the rest of her days in obscurity.
