The microphone in the park grumbled to be again, and the Marine Band played “Hail to the Chief,” and the president was introduced. He began his speech.

On a television replay I’d watch later, his speech was subdued and, for him, temperate. Beyond the sanctum of garbage trucks, though, the crowd grew more agitated. A chant of “Trump 2020” was met with a sing-songy, sarcastic “Bone Spurs.” Bursts of “U-S-A” followed. A veteran wearing a red MAGA hat yelled at a veteran wearing a VETS AGAINST TRUMP shirt and accused him of being a fraud. He, in turn, called the man in the MAGA hat a mouthbreather . (This validated his veteran status in my mind: that’s a military insult, through and through.) A NATO flag was waved and so was a Trump flag and a couple of pimply-faced Trump kids asked a passer-by what her “Peshmerga” shirt meant. She explained and they nodded, seemingly impressed.

“I disagree with what he [President Trump] did to the Kurds,” one said calmly in the maelstrom.

Only splashes of the speech could reach our ears. The president’s clear delight at retelling the death of the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi caused a stir in the crowd, then a series of groans and head shakes, then more ‘U-S-A” chants. A man wearing a signboard (and little else) that said “Jeffrey Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself” wondered aloud when the speech would end — it was going on too long, he believed.

And then on the other side of the metal gates, a man in a wheelchair wearing a World War II hat rolled by, holding a miniature American flag.