Democrat Joe Biden was sworn in as President of the United States on Wednesday and took over the helm of a country ravaged by deep political divisions, a battered economy, and a raging coronavirus pandemic that killed more than 400,000 Americans.
With his hand on an heirloom Bible that has been in his family since 1893, shortly after noon ET (17:00 GMT), Biden took the President’s oath of office, taken by US Supreme Justice John Roberts, promising, the Preserve, Protect, and Defend the United States Constitution ”.
78-year-old Biden became the oldest U.S. president in history at a pared-down ceremony in Washington that celebrated the usual pomp and circumstance due to the coronavirus and security concerns following the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol outgoing President Donald Trump was largely eliminated.
The non-standard Trump disregarded one final convention on his way out of the White House when he refused to meet with Biden or attend his successor’s inauguration, in violation of a political tradition that upheld the peaceful transfer of power.
Top Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence and the party’s congressmen, attended Biden’s inauguration along with former US Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter, 96, was the only living U.S. president not to attend the ceremony, citing coronavirus concerns.
Biden’s runmate, Kamala Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, became the first black person, first woman, and first Asian American to serve as vice president after being sworn in by Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina member.
Harris used two Bibles, including one from Thurgood Marshall, the first judge on the US Supreme Court.
After the siege of the Capitol on January 6, thousands of National Guard troops were called into the city. Five people died and the legislature was briefly forced to go into hiding. Instead of a crowd of trailers, the National Mall was covered by nearly 200,000 flags and 56 pillars of light on Wednesday that were supposed to represent people from US states and territories.
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