As Trump takes the oath, many voters still can't believe it
On the morning 19 months ago when Donald Trump descended the escalator in his glitzy Manhattan tower, waving to onlookers who lined the rails, many Americans knew little about him beyond that he was very rich and had a thing for firing people on a reality television show.
[...] Thoms-Bauer recalled, came the night in November when he joined friends in a diner after a New Jersey Devils hockey game and watched, stunned, as Trump eked out wins in key states.
"Having this realization that he was really going to become president was really just a surreal moment," said Thoms-Bauer, who gave his write-in vote to Evan McMullin, a former CIA agent who ran as a conservative alternative to Trump.
When Trump announced his candidacy, Kayla Coursey recognized him as the developer who had tried and failed to build a golf course she'd opposed in her hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia.
David Sawyers, a 42-year-old truck unloader from Grindstone, Pennsylvania, who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary before voting for Trump, said the big crowds that turned out for the candidate's rallies convinced him the billionaire could win.
[...] Coursey, who identifies as "queer" and is deeply worried by the threat she believes Trump's administration poses to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, said she would avoid joining other students in the dorm television lounge to watch the inauguration.