Leaves could be heard rustling on the street outside a Capitol Hill hotel on Wednesday, despite a large police presence. Inside, however, there was the kind of sound and fury that only Donald Trump can produce.

Welcome, dear readers, back to “The Trump Show.” Season 5. Episode 1: “Hotel MAGA-fornia.”

Outside, Washington Metropolitan Police Department officers chatted among themselves and with their colleagues from the Capitol Police and Secret Service. They traded work stories, sleep schedules and talked about football as they kept the intersections near the hotel safe. At one intersection, officers told three journalists they could not cross nor enter the facility. But at the next, about a football field away, an MPD officer sitting in her white vehicle waved the reporters through. “Y’all can go on across.”

Inside, a harried hotel employee darted to and fro. He was not happy with the media throng that had descended upon the facility for an address by Trump to House Republicans. “Journalists, you’re creating a hazard,” the manager yelled repeatedly. “You are blocking the lobby and you will have to take it outside.”

It all felt like November 2016, all over again.

“We’re doing this again?” your correspondent asked a fellow veteran of the White House press corps who also covered the first Trump term. “Yep. We’re doing this again,” the reporter replied as we traded stories about images from those chaotic years running through our minds since election night.

Reporters huddled around lawmakers to get the skinny about the president-elect’s message — read: marching orders — furrowed their brows at the hotel employee. He meant well, but the scrums looked copied and pasted from the Cannon House Office Building tunnel or hallways around the House chamber. They were not going anywhere.

Nevertheless, he persisted. To no avail — at all. 

As more members tried exiting through the front door via the lobby, the scrums only grew in size and decibels. At times, they became one large scrum, and as your correspondent had briefly ascended an escalator talking to a lawmaker, he noticed from an elevated position it resembled the shape of a chrysanthemum.

A very loud mum — if the hardy perennial flower was made of off-the-rack blazers and other business-casual threads and possessed hardened triceps from countless hours of holding up smartphones to record lawmakers’ every utterance, that is. It was a psychedelic moment — but the Trump beat can have that effect.

“What was Trump’s message?”

“Did he talk about what he would say in his meeting with Biden?”

“Was it basically like one of his rallies?” (Full disclosure: That was yours truly.)

“Did Trump endorse Johnson for speaker?”

“What about spending, did he say anything about an omnibus? Or another CR?”

“What did Trump have for breakfast?” (OK, this last one is, as outgoing President Joe Biden would say, hyperbole — just joking, man.)

Back on the lobby floor, a heavyset bearded man was recording a video on a smartphone, extolling, according to him, the many virtues of Donald John Trump.

“It’s time somebody put our tax money where it’s supposed to go,” he said, pointing a finger at the phone. The man did not explain why Trump, during his first term, either opted against or was unable to right what he opined was a wrong. Details, details…

About that time, a scrum the size of a small battleground state had formed around Rep. Troy Nehls. The Texas Republican was putting on quite the show for reporters, declaring Trump was “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” Asked about congressional GOP leaders and Trump’s agenda, Nehls declared if the incoming president demands they do some rather unique calisthenics, they damn well better get to hoppin’.

Suddenly, “Hazard” guy was back, clearly unhappy Nehls was holding court. 

“Journalists, you have to leave. You can’t record in here. Leave now. You’re blocking the lobby for guests. You are creating a hazard,” the hotel employee yelled with such fruitless gusto that his radio earpiece fell out. 

This time, several reporters shot dirty looks his way. A few smirked. One rolled her eyes. Must. Get. All. The. Trump. News. 

A few hours later, customers chatted beside a gift shop display featuring buttons that celebrated Trump’s second presidential victory, complete with his smiling face in the center.

“Nine dollars? Nine dollars?” a man asked rhetorically as he left the hotel gift shop surprised by the cost of his lone purchase, a large bottle of water. 

“That’s how they get ya,” said a Capitol Police officer who was passing by. 

“That’s how Trump won, right there,” the man replied. The officer chuckled, never breaking stride as he laughed and said, “Yup. Yup.”

Around the corner, a few hours before House GOP members again nominated Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., for speaker — at Trump’s behest — the bearded supporter of the president-elect was still spreading the good word.

He was telling what looked to be a rather disinterested companion that Trump was “coming back, to make this country great again — once and for all.”