Gail Alexan­der

For­mer Pres­by­ter­ian mod­er­a­tor Rev Daniel Teelucks­ingh: "US me­dia re­port­ed Trump took the oath of of­fice on (one of two) bibles his moth­er gave him for Sun­day school in his Pres­by­ter­ian church. The Pres­by­ter­ian Church is one of the ma­jor de­nom­i­na­tions in the USA. One of the dis­tinc­tive fea­tures of Pres­by­ter­ian-ism is its em­pha­sis that things be done in an or­der­ly and dis­ci­plined man­ner. If this in­flu­ences Trump's poli­cies, then in var­i­ous mat­ters he'll be well-guid­ed. But his ad­min­is­tra­tion will not hurt T&T's more than the present scourge of crim­i­nal vi­o­lence in our so­ci­ety."

Op­po­si­tion MP Gan­ga Singh: "Trump rev­o­lu­tionised Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. While you may not agree with his poli­cies, you must ad­mire his ca­pac­i­ty for en­gi­neer­ing his vic­to­ry in al­most in­sur­mount­able odds. I re­gard him as a po­lit­i­cal ge­nius in that re­gard. He gives cre­dence to the state­ment 'one man with an idea is a ma­jor­i­ty'."

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon: "The sen­tence in Mr Trump's in­au­gur­al speech about 'hire Amer­i­can and buy Amer­i­can' isn't enough to as­sess what this will mean for T&T. We have to wait and as­cer­tain more."

Is­lam­ic front leader Umar Ab­dul­lah :"His speech shows the en­tire world he's go­ing to do ex­act­ly what he said dur­ing his elec­tion cam­paign. For that, we have to be cau­tious in how he fol­lows through on his rhetoric and as well as T&T fol­low­ing the dic­tates of Amer­i­ca re­gard­ing Mus­lims prac­tis­ing their re­li­gion."

For­mer UNC min­is­ter Mervyn As­sam: "When Pres­i­dent Trump dealt with us on stag­ing the 1999 Miss Uni­verse show in T&T, he had a good ex­pe­ri­ence. But the PNM then- in­clud­ing Dr (Kei­th) Row­ley was very caus­tic about it. If they ex­plored fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties with the US based on that ad­van­tage, they may be suc­cess­ful. But I don't think Trump's ad­min­is­tra­tion would in­ter­fere with Cari­com trade re­la­tions since a ma­jor (CBI) agree­ment is ex­tend­ed to 2025. But en­er­gy ex­ports could be af­fect­ed due to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of US ex­ports in­clud­ing US shale."

T&T born, Wash­ing­ton res­i­dent Dr Win­ston Smith, "I kept far from the in­au­gu­ra­tion venue since the at­mos­phere is very tense due to the num­bers of peo­ple plan­ning to protest and the num­bers of pro-Trump sup­port­ers plan­ning to demon­strate to counter the an­ti-Trump groups. Some Tri­nis here are hav­ing house limes, but the at­mos­phere is quite the op­po­site of the 2009 Oba­ma in­au­gu­ra­tion. Peo­ple aren't ac­cus­tomed to the Trump rhetoric and oth­er ac­tions - but to each his own."

For­mer US Em­bassy (po­lit­i­cal sec­tion chief ) Randy De­poo, res­i­dent in TT: "Trump is a bril­liant tac­ti­cian. To have come from the side­lines and be­come US Pres­i­dent. He de­fied con­ven­tion­al wis­dom - that you don't win the Pres­i­den­cy with­out the Black and His­pan­ic vote - and he brought out the la­tent white vote who'd nev­er have come out."