Americans in Northern Ireland disagree over Trump inauguration
Americans in Northern Ireland have taken starkly different impressions away from the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.
The 47th president was inaugurated on Monday this week - and quickly made headlines by signing off a slew of executive orders.
Pastor Ed Bisset, 73 and from Alaska, is pastor at Clady Water Baptist Church in Templepatrick.
"I was kind of surprised at all the pomp and circumstance they had at the inauguration, for example the choir walking around and singing songs, compared to what I normally see,” he said.
"But I thought he tried to be as positive as he could about the future."
He emphasies that Trump is only one third of US government and is held in check by Congress and the Supreme Court.
Mr Bisset thinks it has worked to Trump's advantage to be ousted by Joe Biden after only one term because it gave him time “to evaluate how he can better achieve his goals this term”.
He is also “impressed” with his picks for cabinet and he backs Trump's executive order to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization, and to ramp up drilling for oil in Alaska.
The pastor is also quite relaxed about Trump's order to pardon over 1,5000 people for the Capitol Hill Riots, “so long as they weren’t guilty of violence”.
He believes the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza would probably not have happened without pressure from Trump.
However American Brian Kelly, a Reader in US History at QUB, is a staunch critic of Mr Trump.
He told the News Letter: "What struck me most [about the inauguration] was how much it felt like the worst of American game show TV: cheap hype and bombast, some red meat for the Trump base, and a kind of concocted nostalgia for an America that never really existed.
"Trump went heavy on past resentments, but it’s time now to put up or shut up. He’s raised expectations especially around the economy: time to deliver."
He also disputed Trump's role in the Gaza ceasefire.
"There are conflicting accounts of team Trump’s intervention around Gaza. What we can say is that it would be difficult to do worse than the Biden/Blinken legacy, which in the long term will mark an inflection point for US imperial decline.
"Trump’s approach is transactional; on the other hand his Middle East team could have been hand-picked by Israel’s extreme right.
"Time will tell which of these dominates. There is spin around the Gaza ceasefire, but my fear is that Israel will violate it at will, with Trump’s assent, and even extend full scale war into the West Bank."
Meanwhile, TUV MP Jim Allister and MLA Timothy Gaston have tabled motions congratulating Trump on his inauguration. Their motion reads: "That this House congratulates Donald Trump on his inauguration as forty seventh President of the United States of America; looks forward to the leader of the Free World defending national sovereignty and borders; and insisting that the EU’s colonial control of the trade and economic laws of Northern Ireland is ended before any trade deal is negotiated with the United Kingdom."