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Protests mark Trump’s first day as US president
World erupts against right-wing populist billionaire’s inauguration ceremony

DONALD TRUMP faced angry protests en route to his inauguration in Washington DC yesterday — with more demonstrations around the world.

Dozens of disparate groups flocked to the capital in a bid to disrupt the billionaire’s ascent to the White House as hundreds of thousands of spectators gathered.

The Disrupt J20 coalition vowed to cause chaos at security checkpoints into the high-security zone around the inauguration ceremony, even if it meant being arrested.

Organiser Eleanor Goldfield called the throng of jubilant Trump supporters “misguided, misinformed or just plain dangerous.”

Black Lives Matter, the anti-war Answer Coalition and feminist groups also protested, while demonstrators clad in black upturned bins and smashed shop windows.

Many Congress members had vowed to boycott the event, but Mr Trump’s vanquished Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton arrived as guest of her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

Mr Trump had promised sweeping changes on his first day in office, including withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal signed last year and lifting restrictions on fossil fuel extraction.

Speaking at a concert at Washington’s Lincoln Memorial on Thursday night, the man who has polarised US politics claimed: “We’re going to unify our country.

“We’re going to make America great for all our people. We’re going to do things that haven’t been done for our country for many, many decades. It’s going to change.”

Meanwhile protesters clashed with police outside the pro-Trump “Deploraball” — a mocking reference to Ms Clinton’s dismissal of Trump voters as “a basket of deplorables.”

One man waving a pro-Trump flag had objects thrown at him and was chased to the nearby Warner Theatre, where Fox News presenter and Trump supporter Sean Hannity brandished his fist at the protesters.

And at a star-studded “Peace Ball” at the city’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, veteran left-wing actor Danny Glover warned lamenters: “We can’t just sit and lick our wounds.

“Our work is cut out for us. We have to make some hard choices.”

In the Philippines, left-wing umbrella group Bayan led hundreds of protesters outside the US embassy in Manila.

Secretary-general Renato Reyes said: “[Outgoing president Barack] Obama sugar-coated imperialism but Trump has shown an in-your-face kind of imperialism.”

But Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expressed hope for detente after being treated like a “banana republic” by Mr Obama, saying: “We are hoping that reason will prevail.

“The Obama administration has destroyed relations between the US and Russia, which are at their lowest point in decades,” he said.

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