Biden is 46th US President
The 78-year-old, the oldest American president in history, assumes charge at a scaled-back event
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump hailed his administration’s record as he left the White House for the last time on Wednesday before Presidentelect Joe Biden assumed the helm of a country beset by deep political divides and battered by a raging coronavirus pandemic.
Biden, 78, was being sworn in on Wednesday at a scaled-back ceremony in Washington that was largely stripped of its usual pomp and circumstance, due both to the coronavirus as well as security concerns following the January 6 assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.
Trump left the White House with his wife Melania just after 8am (1300 GMT) by helicopter on his way to a sendoff event at Joint Air Force Base Andrews, where he promised supporters “we’ll be back in some form” and listed his administration’s accomplishments before flying off to Florida.
Trump’s refusal to greet his successor and attend the inauguration represented a break with more than a century and a half of political tradition, seen as a way to affirm the peaceful transfer of power.
Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants
We don’t have a second to waste when it comes to tackling the crises we face as a nation
JOE BIDEN,
US President
from Jamaica and India, is the first Black person, first woman and first Asian American to serve as vice president after being sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina member.
Wednesday’s ceremony was unfolding in front of a heavily fortified US Capitol, where a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building two weeks ago, enraged by his false claims that November’s election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes.
The violence prompted the Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives to impeach Trump last week for an unprecedented second time.
WASHINGTON: Democrat Joe Biden became the 46th president of the United States on Wednesday, assuming the helm of a country beset by deep political divides and battered by a raging coronavirus pandemic.
Biden, 78, is the oldest US president in history.
He took charge at a scaledback ceremony in Washington, DC that has been largely stripped of its usual pomp and circumstance, due both to the coronavirus as well as security concerns following the January 6 assault on the US Capitol by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump.
With only a small number of attendees present, the Democrat was to take oath of office before US Chief Justice John Roberts just after noon, placing his hand on an heirloom Bible that has been in the Biden family for more than a century.
His running mate, Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, will become the first Black person, first woman and first Asian American to serve as vice president after she is sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina member.
The ceremony was being held in front of a heavily fortified US Capitol, where a mob of Trump supporters stormed the building two weeks ago, enraged by his false claims that November’s election was stolen with millions of fraudulent votes. The violence prompted the Demo
cratic-controlled US House of Representatives to impeach Trump last week for an unprecedented second time.
Thousands of National Guard troops were called into the city after the siege, which left five people dead and briefly forced lawmakers into hiding.
Instead of a throng of supporters, the National Mall was be covered by nearly 200,000 flags and 56 pillars of light meant to represent people from US states and territories.
On Tuesday, Biden called for national healing at a solemn
memorial service at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool for those who died in the Covid-19 pandemic. “To heal, we must remember. And it is hard sometimes to remember, but that’s how we heal,” Biden said, adding, “It is important to do that as a nation.”
“Between sundown and dusk, let us shine the lights in the darkness along this sacred pool of reflection and remember all who we have lost,” he said.
US toll in the Covid-19 epidemic crossed 400,000 Tuesday crossing yet another grim milestone,
according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker. Total infections were more than 24 million. The Biden inauguration committee which organized the memorial installed 400 lights around the poll, each representing 1,000 Covid-19 deaths. They were lit as Biden and Harris spoke.
At a brief event in Wilmington, Delaware, before starting for Washington DC, Biden got emotional speaking about his journey so far and his eldest son Beau Biden, who died of brain cancer in 2015.
Trump pardons Bannon, Lil Wayne, 71 others
Donald Trump granted clemency to dozens of people on Wednesday, including his former strategist Steve Bannon, the rapper Lil Wayne and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, in one of his final official acts as president.
A list of pardons and commutations the White House released on Wednesday, Trump’s last day in office, doesn’t include the president himself.
Trump had discussed pre
emptively pardoning himself and associates, but some advisers had cautioned the president against what would have been an unprecedented action, according to people familiar with the matter.
The outgoing president pardoned 73 people and commuted the sentences of 70.
Many are relatively littleknown felons, but the list includes a number of celebrities, former lawmakers, executives and people connected to the president, his family or members of Congress.