WASHINGTON – Hours before Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of a nation deeply divided over his policies and character, U.S. Capitol Police and protesters clashed this morning at a gate for spectators going to the swearing-in ceremony.

Dozens of people protesting a variety of causes including Palestinian rights and the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay locked arms and struggled with Trump supporters shoving their way through.

Police in regular uniform pushed the protesters away in a scene that resembled a rugby scrum.

When protesters returned a short time later, again with the U.S. Capitol in the backdrop, police in black riot gear pushed them away. At least one protester fell to the ground in the second scrum.

Trump supporters were slowly able to make their way around a line of police, as protesters continued chanting, “No justice, no peace.”

Long before the confrontations began around 8 a.m., dozens of Trump supporters were streaming in the darkness onto the Capitol grounds, where Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, of Indiana, will take their oaths of office.

Among them was Bobby Walker, 18, of Cooperstown, N.Y., who said Trump’s inauguration is the beginning of “change.”

That is a change from the “establishment politics” in Washington, D.C., he said, to a time of getting things done outside the influence of high-powered lobbyists.

Trump presured Lockheed Martin Corp. to lower the price of the F-35 fighter just through using Twitter, said Walker, who wore a button, “Donald Trump: I was there.”

Dwayne “Doc” Collins, an East Texas veterinarian wearing a black cowboy hat, pushed his wheelchair through a separate gate than the one that saw the protests.

To Collins, a member of the local Tea Party in Edom, Texas, Trump’s inauguration marks the beginning of a “groundswell to make America great again.”

He looked forward to Trump creating new jobs, lowering taxes and attacking “a bureaucracy that’s gotten too large.”

But two polls this week – one by CNN and ORC International, the other by ABC News and The Washington Post – show fewer than half of Americans have a favorable opinion of their new president.

Trump’s 40 percent favorable rating in the ABC News/Post poll, according to the newspaper, is the lowest of any president in the past 40 years.

In a scene illustrating a divided nation, Sandra De Alcuaz stood among protesters, some of whom wore orange jumpsuits with black hoods to symbolize Guantanamo prisoners. She held a sign, “There is a man under the hood.”

Nearby a man holding a sign commanding “Repent” was engaged in a battle of bullhorns, face to face with another protester.

The man yelled through his bullhorn, “Jesus is coming to kill his enemies.”

The woman yelled through hers, “We want justice.”

De Alcuaz also said Trump’s inauguration is a beginning.

“What I fear is we will fall back in terms of environmental protection and basic freedoms,” she said. “It’s the first time in my life – and I’m in my 60s – when I’m fearful for my country.”

For many of those supporting Trump, the day marks a deeper change than building a wall along the border with Mexico or repealing the Affordable Care Act – pillars of his campaign.

“I’m hoping for a resurgence of conservatism, an explosion of conservative beliefs,” said MaKray Kyer, a sophomore at Dalton State College in Georgia, as he got off one of six buses of Trump supporters that arrived Thursday morning in College Park, Maryland, from the Atlanta area.

Kyer, who has been mocked on campus for wearing his red Trump hat, said conservatives no longer need to feel cast out and disenfranchised.

“Conservatives can be bolder in pursuing their beliefs,” he said Thursday morning, after he and 72 others got off the buses adorned with “Make America Great Again” on the sides.

On whether change will be good or bad, there is wide disagreement.

“Barack Obama’s agenda was so socialistic, so anti-Christian,” said Dianne Putnam, of Dalton, Georgia, who also rode on a bus from Atlanta to Washington.

“This is not the America our founding fathers died for,” she said.

Danny Hamilton, who organized the caravan from Atlanta aboard his Star Coaches buses, the kind used by entertainers, said he imagines “going back to the kind of America I grew up with.”

Hamilton, who considers himself an independent, said he voted for Obama in 2008, believing he the first African American president would be bring the races together.

He quickly soured on Obama, when the Affordable Care Act sent the premiums he pays for his employees’ health insurance skyrocketing and he saw the country moving in the wrong direction along myriad paths.

Hamilton, who grew up in Tifton, Georgia, locking his door, said the country is now inundated with drugs.

Trump may not totally restore the feeling of safety he remembers from his youth, he said, but tightening the borders will help.

Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Indiana, in an interview Thursday, said he also looks forward to change, specifically being involved in Trump’s promise to build infrastructure and repeal the Affordable Care Act

“Finally, after six years, I’m going to have partners to work with,” said Rokita, a member of the House budget committee.

Rokita pronounced Trump’s taking office “the beginning of a different direction.”

“The problem with the old direction was that it was very divisive and significantly socialistic,” he said. “America is at a point where we may have some question marks, but we know where we were going was not working.”

He discounted the polls showing Trump’s sagging popularity.

“Polls, schmolls,” he said.

He also blasted members of Congress who are boycotting the inauguration. Rokita said he went to Obama’s two inaugurations, “even though we couldn’t agree on the color of the sky on certain days.”

“This is about America and the Constitution, not about your petty political ideology,” he said.

Trump’s inauguration – including three official balls – are being funded by more than $100 million raised by his inaugural committee — about twice as much as Obama raised when he took the oath of office in 2009 and 2013.

Some of Trump’s support came from large donations that gave contributors special access to Trump, Pence and congressional leaders, the Center for Public Integrity reported.

A fundraising brochure disclosed by the non-profit investigative journalism outlet showed those giving $1 million or more to the Trump inaugural received tickets to an “intimate dinner” with Pence and his wife, Karen.

They also received tickets to a “candlelight” dinner with Trump, Pence and their wives, as well as tickets to an inaugural ball Friday night.

Those giving $500,000 or more received tickets to the candlelight dinner, the ball and “an intimate policy discussion and dinner with select Cabinet appointees,” among other perks.

The inaugural committee did not respond to a request for information about its events, or the names of those who’ve donated $500,000 or more. The committee is not required to disclose its donors until 90 days after the inauguration.

Kery Murakami is the Washington, D.C. reporter for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Contact him at kmurakami@cnhi.com.

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