Presidential Inauguration 2017: Twitter's Message To 'Consider Canada'

ROCKVILLE, MD — For days, residents in the Washington, D.C., area have been warned to stay off the highways and interstates on Friday as visitors from around the country pour in for the swearing-in of the 45th president of the United States. So an image passed around on Twitter Friday morning of an interstate message board urging drivers to rethink their election choice must have been for real, since everything on the Internet is true.

Maybe not. As millions of Americans either celebrate or mourn the inauguration of Donald Trump — an unlikely, controversial and sometimes divisive president — a photo of a Maryland State Highway Administration electronic sign between Rockville and Bethesda on Interstate 270 was turned into a meme that Twitter users shared.

The traffic message said that in light of the inauguration drivers should expect delays and consider taking the Metro. Many trains in the region were not full Friday morning.

But wags worked their photo-editing skills to morph the message into "Consider Canada."

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Even as the National Mall filled with thousands of Trump supporters, opponents marched down streets and crowded in front of the limited number of entrances to the swearing-in site to protest an inauguration they fought to prevent during the general election and have found little solace in Cabinet selections and other decisions and comments Trump has made during the transition.

Demonstrations also popped up in cities big and small across the country, as protesters took to the streets (and the skies) to show opposition to America's new president. And they came a day before coordinated marches across the country that were expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people.

»Photo from the Maryland State Highway Administration