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This article is more than 1 year old And breathe: the world exhales as the madness of the Trump era ends Jonathan Freedland This article is more than 1 year old After four years in a heightened state of alert, many people the world over now hope that sanity will return For four years the […] More
For four years the world had held its breath, but at last came the moment to exhale. Ever since noon on 20 January 2017, when Donald Trump took the oath that made him president of the United States, the people of the planet had found themselves in a state of heightened alert: what new madness might the most powerful man on earth unleash? Within months, he had seemed to threaten nuclear war with North Korea – in a tweet directed at Kim Jong-un, he boasted that “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” – and there were days when it seemed rational to wonder if America, and the rest of us, would even survive four years of a Trump presidency.Eleven minutes before noon local time, it became possible to breathe out once more. Joe Biden recited the magical incantation by which a single US citizen is transformed into the head of government, head of state and symbol of the republic. As he uttered the words “So help me God,” his hand on a thick Bible, a wave of blessed relief rippled through millions of Americans – and all those, anywhere, who had lived through the stress of the Trump era. The TV networks had helpfully shown footage of the military aide who carries the nuclear “football”, the case containing the codes required to launch the mighty US atomic arsenal, and there was comfort in knowing that that aide now answered to Biden, not the man who a few hours earlier had fled to his resort in Florida.Technically, the oath had come early. According to the constitution, the presidency was not fully in Biden’s hands until just after 12, and even those last remaining minutes were capable of inducing anxiety. “Phew,” tweeted one commentator when the moment finally passed.But relief was not the only emotion on display in a ceremony performed before a National Mall packed with flags rather than people in an eerily empty Washington, hollowed out by both the pandemic and security fears prompted by this month’s storming of the Capitol. There was joy, too, most visible in the face of Kamala Harris after she had sworn her own oath. There have been 46 US presidents and 49 vice-presidents, but until Wednesday every one of them had been a man. Harris became the first woman, and the first person of colour, to occupy America’s second highest office. The elation of that moment, the exuberance of it, somehow found expression in the performances of Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez, which soared.What would once have seemed ritual and routine acquired an emotional punch. The sight of Mike Pence on the platform was oddly stirring. Given his boss’s refusal to attend the inauguration, Pence’s appearance – and those of other Republicans – looked like an act of defiance, signalling acceptance of the democratic legitimacy of the proceedings. The presence of former presidents – Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama – suggested the chain of American democracy remained intact, even if its most recent link was missing and broken.[embedded content]That message was conveyed most eloquently by Biden himself. His speech was light on rhetorical splendour, but it matched the moment perfectly. It was like him: humane, decent, rooted. He asked for silence for those who had been lost to the pandemic, a simple act of acknowledgment that had eluded his predecessor. He named the challenges that confront him and the country – the virus, the war on truth, the climate crisis – and asked Americans to at least hear him out and come together. “We must end this uncivil war,” he said.It was tempting to look on this man – solid and seasoned – and imagine that something like normality might return. And when another woman of colour, the 22-year-old Amanda Gorman, closed things out with a poem that brought delight, you could just glimpse a land that had been barely visible these last four years: an America the rest of the world might admire once more. More
This article is more than 1 year old ‘A weight has been lifted’: Washington locals express hope as Biden sworn in This article is more than 1 year old Residents in eerily quiet Washington DC relieved to see Trump leave while 25,000 national guard troops on patrol Biden inauguration – live updates As she watched […] More
As she watched Donald Trump’s helicopter lift away from the White House on Wednesday morning, Nadine Seiler said, she gave it the finger.
“I’ve been protesting him for four years,” the 55-year-old said. “I can exhale now that he’s gone.”
Seiler was standing in Black Lives Matter Plaza, outside the heavily barricaded White House, wearing an outfit that captured the arc of the last four years of protest. She had donned a pink knit pussy hat, a symbol of the Women’s March, the first major demonstration of Trump’s tenure, and a face mask painted with the words “Madam VP”, in honor of the country’s first Black, south Asian and female vice-president, who would be inaugurated later that day.
“I can’t let my guard down,” she added. “His supporters are going to be terrorizing America for the next four years.”
Even as he left Washington, Seiler said, Trump was “giving them dog whistles”, telling supporters their movement was not over.
Still, across an eerily quiet Washington, with streets blocked with fences and checkpoints, and 25,000 national guard troops – more than the number of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined – on patrol, local residents said they felt tentatively hopeful. More
“It’s the economy, stupid,” a catchphrase coined in the 1990s by American political strategist James Carville, made George H. W. Bush — who won the First Gulf War for Americans — a one-term president, catapulting Bill Clinton into the White House. As Donald Trump’s one-term presidency winds down with an attempted insurrection, widespread social media …
Continue Reading “Donald Trump Proves That It’s the System, Stupid”
The post Donald Trump Proves That It’s the System, Stupid appeared first on Fair Observer. More
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr has been sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, promising to marshal a spirit of national unity to guide the country through one of the most perilous chapters in American history.Speaking under a bright winter sky, as snow flurries melted and the clouds parted, Biden declared “democracy has prevailed” during a ceremony that honored the ritual transfer of power at the US Capitol, where exactly two weeks ago a swarm of supporters loyal to his predecessor stormed the building in a violent and futile last stand to overturn the results of the election.“This is America’s day,” Biden said, looking across the sprawl of the capital city’s national monuments, now guarded by a military garrison unprecedented in modern times, and devoid of spectators as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. “This is democracy’s day.”Millions of Americans watched from home as Chief Justice John Roberts administered the 35-word oath of office to Biden, moments before noon, when he formally inherited the powers of the presidency.[embedded content]“Few people in our nation’s history have been more challenged or found a time more challenging or difficult than the time we’re in now,” he said, promising to dedicate his “whole soul” to rebuilding a country ravaged by disease, economic turmoil, racial inequality and political division.Donald Trump, who never formally conceded his defeat, left the White House on Wednesday morning and was not in attendance, a final display of irreverence for the traditions and norms that have long shaped the presidency. Mike Pence, the outgoing vice-president, was there, joined by the Clintons, the Bushes and the Obamas.Hours after being sworn in, Biden was expected to begin undoing what his chief of staff described as “the gravest damages” of his predecessor’s legacy. Biden will sign 15 executive orders, as well as a flurry of memorandums and decrees from the Oval Office, according to his top policy advisers.He will immediately rejoin the Paris climate accords, end the effort to leave the World Health Organization, repeal a travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and extend a pause on student loan payments and a federal moratorium on evictions and foreclosures.He will also send a sweeping immigration bill to Congress and will impose a national mandate requiring mask-wearing in federal buildings.Fear and anxiety surrounded the lead-up to Biden’s inauguration. The threat of more violence resulted in the deployment of nearly 25,000 national guard troops, transforming the shining city upon a hill into a military fortress.The pandemic had already greatly reshaped the inaugural events and ceremony, which typically draws hundreds of thousands of spectators to the National Mall. Much of the area was closed. Instead, flags from the states and territories represented those who the inaugural committee had urged to stay away, out of concern that large crowds would spread the coronavirus, which has now killed more than 400,000 Americans.Part of Biden’s legacy was secured even before he placed his hand atop a large, 19th-century Bible, a family heirloom accented with a Celtic cross and held by his wife, Jill Biden. Biden, the vice-president to the nation’s first black president, elevated Kamala Harris as America’s first female, first Black and first Asian American vice-president.“Don’t tell me things can’t change,” he said, marking explicitly the history of Harris’ ascension.The ceremony was enlivened by musical performances. Lady Gaga gave a towering rendition of the national anthem, Jennifer Lopez arrestingly mixed patriotic paeans with the pledge of allegiance in Spanish – “indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos” – and Garth Brooks asked Americans to join him in singing Amazing Grace.Biden’s inauguration brings to a close one of the most volatile transitions in modern memory, an interregnum that tested the fragility of America’s commitment to an orderly and peaceful transition of power. For weeks after his defeat, Trump whipped up loyalists with baseless allegations of a stolen election.His claims were dismissed by dozens of courts, security experts, Republican election officials and his then attorney general. But Trump refused to accept his fate, a decision that culminated two weeks ago in the assault on the US Capitol, where rioters attempted to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win.Biden said the events of the past few weeks offered “painful lesson” about the power of words and the threat of conspiracy.“There is truth and there are lies,” he said, reminding the nation’s political leaders, many of whom were arrayed onstage behind him, that it was their duty to “defend the truth and defeat the lies”.As Biden spoke, Trump was nearly 1,000 miles away, at his south Florida resort in Mar-a-Lago, where he concluded his historically unpopular presidency. Earlier on Wednesday, he held a farewell event for families and supporters. In his final hours as commander-in-chief, he boasted that the last four years had been “amazing by any standard” and promised he would “be back in some form”.Biden never mentioned his predecessor by name but struck a stark contrast in tone and tenor. During his remarks, he paused to observe a moment of silence to remember those who had died from the virus, acknowledging the pandemic’s grim toll in way Trump never did.Whereas Trump four years ago conjured dark visions of “American carnage”, Biden described a nation capable of overcoming daunting odds and seemingly incontrovertible divisions. He appealed for unity, a dominant theme of his presidential campaign, while recognizing that the plea might sound like “foolish fantasy” in an age governed by tribalism and partisan passions.“We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal,” he said.Nearly half a century after he was sworn in as one of the nation’s youngest senators, he became the oldest president to take the oath of office, at 78.A veteran of Washington first elected to the Senate in 1972, where he served until becoming vice-president under Barack Obama in 2009, Biden enters the White House with one of the deepest résumés in American political history, experience he will rely as he faces what he called “this time of testing”.Loss and recovery have marked his long career in public service. His first wife and his daughter were killed in a car accident days after his election to the Senate. In 2015, he buried his eldest son, Beau, who died of brain cancer. Biden’s rise to the presidency, the realization of a life’s dream, was paved with false starts and bad timing. A plagiarism scandal plagued his first run. Outshone by the history-making candidacy of his Democratic opponents in 2008, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Biden bowed out before the Iowa caucuses. Then, in 2015, still mourning the loss of his son, Biden opted not to run.But Trump’s presidency tormented him. Trump’s failure to forcefully condemn the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 was Biden’s motivation for launching a third presidential bid. Biden presented himself as a rebuke to Trump – an empathetic figure shaped by personal tragedy who believed he had something to offer the country at a moment of national tragedy.“We will be judged, you and I, by how we resolve these cascading crises of our era,” Biden said in his address. “Will we rise to the occasion, is the question. Will we master this rare and difficult hour? Will we meet our obligations and pass along a new and better world to our children? I believe we must.” More
Donald Trump departed today from the American presidency as he arrived four years ago: vain, cruel and telling lies, without any vestige of grace or magnanimity.There was no acknowledgment of, still less apology for, his deranged delinquency in the face of Covid, or of his election defeat – failures that made the nervy, locked-down inauguration of Joe Biden inevitable. But Trump leaves having changed America.Biden did his best today. He had been absolutely the right candidate to defeat Trump at the polls. He calmly outsmarted the incumbent through the campaign; his appointments have been good; and there is no one in American politics better placed to begin the healing of wounds that ran through everything he said at the inauguration.The address by Biden on Capitol Hill did not mention Trump by name, but it was saturated in his blowhard predecessor’s divisive legacy. The riot of 6 January hung over the occasion, the speech and even the images. The speech struck necessary and reassuring notes of realism, humility, hope and consistency. It was wholly unTrumpian. But Biden cannot remake America by trying to lead it back to a better yesterday. That would fail.To describe it as a presidential inauguration without parallel is to risk a lack of historical awareness on the one hand or journalistic hyperbole on the other. America, its institutions and values have survived civil war before, as well as assassination. America will probably survive the horrors of Trump’s corrupt tenure, which Biden called “this uncivil war”. But survival may no longer be enough in an America that has been led too close to the brink of a deeper conflict by a wanton leader, abetted by a weak-willed party, an elite of morally supine tech companies and the lie machines of Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch.Yet it is also true that Trump is not a one-off. Consider this: “American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme rightwingers … But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.”Each one of those words could have been written this week. In fact, the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote them six decades ago, after the failed 1964 presidential bid of the rightwing Republican Barry Goldwater. Hofstadter drew the argument not only from the delusions of the 1960s, but from a line of conspiracy theories that stretched right back to the French Revolution in the 1790s and forward to McCarthyism in the 1950s – and beyond.This tells us two things that need to be remembered in the light of the Biden inauguration. The first is that the battle to extend and bolster democratic values needs to be as sleepless as the tradition of those who oppose them. Biden’s words, that “disagreement must not lead to disunion”, indicate the scale of what is at stake. Disunion can wreck a nation.The rioters of 6 January adhere to what the columnist David Brooks calls a “violent Know-Nothingism that has always coursed through American history”. They sometimes see themselves as refighting America’s 18th-century war of independence. It is more accurate to see them as refighting the 19th-century civil war from the side of the Confederacy, whose racial legacy still scars the United States 150 years later. They have to be punished and defeated.Biden said nothing about that. Yet, as the Economist said last week, you do not overcome division by pretending that nothing is wrong but by facing it. The US senate has to finish the job by convicting Trump too.The second lesson is that, while America sometimes echoes and influences the politics of other nations, including Britain’s, it is also extremely different. In most respects, and far more than many politicians elsewhere understand, the United States follows its own distinct path. It is a foreign country, and the better you get to know it the more aware of that you become. Trump has turbocharged that. This is the America that Biden now leads.Foreigners, especially English-speaking foreigners, need to control their delusions about America. Until 2017, every inaugural was watched from Europe as a statement of the terms on which our own politics here would be set for the coming years. Trump changed all that. American carnage broke the dials, which sadly the former British prime minister Theresa May failed to see. Biden’s warm words now will not reset the dials. There was surprisingly little in his address about foreign policy. The future of America’s place in the world is not definitively settled by the change of administration.Trump lost the election, but he has changed things for a generation. Biden’s address was an implicit acknowledgment of that. The European nations, Britain included, need to grasp the same thing. Just as the era of American domestic bipartisanship remains for the foreseeable future a thing of the past, so the era of American global leadership is not for rebuilding quickly or perhaps at all.Under Donald Trump, the arrogance of global greatness came perilously close to breaking America. If Biden and his successors fail, that may still happen. But Brexit has shown that Britain suffers from an arrogance of greatness all of its own. Britain is a vessel sailing the oceans in the dark without charts or lights. Biden’s America will not come to the rescue any time soon. It has its own problems to solve. More
Kamala Harris has been sworn in as vice-president, becoming the first woman in American history – as well as the first woman of African American and south Asian descent – to hold the post.The former California senator was sworn in by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina on the supreme court. Harris chose to be sworn in using two Bibles, one from the late Thurgood Marshall, the first Black supreme court justice, and one from Regina Shelton, a close family friend who was something like a surrogate mother for Harris and her sister when they were growing up.“Ready to serve,” Harris tweeted from her new vice-presidential Twitter account shortly after being sworn in.Harris’s inauguration marks a turning point in American history. Women have run on presidential tickets as would-be vice-presidents but until Joe Biden’s win, none were victorious.Wearing a face mask, Harris was escorted through the Capitol by Eugene Goodman, the African American Capitol police officer who was hailed as a hero for helping to distract rioters from invading the Senate floor during the attack this month.As the newly sworn-in vice-president left the Capitol, she mingled with attendees and gave a hug to Barack Obama.Harris’s elevation fulfills a major a goal of Biden’s presidential arc: to install people of color and women in powerful positions in his administration, oftentimes where, historically, only white men have been.Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who offered introductory remarks before Harris took the oath of office, noted that Harris “stands on the shoulders of so many on this platform”.Klobuchar added that with Harris as vice-president, “little girls and little boys across the world will know that anything and everything is possible. And in the end, that is America.”Harris spoke with the now former vice-president, Mike Pence, earlier this week and Pence left a note in the vice-president’s office for his successor. Pence sat feet away from Harris as she took the oath of office.Madam Vice President Kamala Devi Harris!!!— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) January 20, 2021
Harris’s congressional and California colleagues, as well as fellow Howard University alumnae, hailed her new job. Democrat Karen Carter Peterson, a Louisiana state senator running for Congress who also attended the university, tweeted: “Madam Vice President Harris!”“In many folks’ lifetimes, we experienced a segregated United States,” said Lateefah Simon, a civil rights advocate and longtime Harris friend and mentee. “You will now have a Black woman who will walk into the White House not as a guest but as a second in command of the free world.”Gavin Newsom, the governor of California and sometime Democratic rival to Harris, said: “History made.”Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio noted the momentous nature of Harris’s new position for Americans and especially young Black people.“American workers will finally have someone on their side in the White House, and millions of girls – especially Black and brown girls – all over the country are seeing that there is no limit to their dreams, and they belong in every room where decisions are made,” Brown said in a statement.Oprah Winfrey said she was in tears over Harris.Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, also offered felicitations.Congratulations to @KamalaHarris on being sworn-in as @VP. It is a historic occasion. Looking forward to interacting with her to make India-USA relations more robust. The India-USA partnership is beneficial for our planet.— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 20, 2021
Republicans offered cautious greetings to Harris and the new Biden administration.Congratulations to President @JoeBiden and VP @KamalaHarris. I’m glad to have joined in the peaceful transition of power today. I look forward to working with the Biden administration when it is good for Montana and will vigorously push back when necessary.— Steve Daines (@SteveDaines) January 20, 2021
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate, said Wednesday marked a peaceful transition of power. He did not mention Harris directly.Today we witnessed a central tenet of American democracy: the peaceful transition of power. We are one nation under God, and it is time for all of us to unite as one American family. (1/2)— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) January 20, 2021
Brandon Davis, a veteran Democratic political strategist who runs a firm specializing in working for Black candidates, said Harris “will likely have a larger profile given the historic nature and her high profile, but she will be able to learn and strengthen her personal politics from a key position”.It “will be interesting to see how she tacks her politics on issues of race, particularly criminal justice reform, and how she builds a record on the economy,” Davis added in an email. “No matter what, she is a HUGE player in the Democratic Party / Left for the next decade.”Harris often says that she wants to be a “person that sees everyone”, said the Democratic strategist Minyon Moore, who had been advising Harris when she became vice-president-elect and helped set up the staffing for her office. “I think what the president did by appointing her as his nominee at the time, he was signaling to the world: we see everyone in America.”Governor Phil Scott of Vermont, a Republican and one of the most popular governors in the country, issued a statement extending “my sincere congratulations and best wishes to the president and vice-president on their swearing-in to lead our nation.”“The challenges we face are great: confronting a global pandemic and its economic fallout; strengthening America’s position in the world and our alliances; combating systemic racism; addressing climate change; building a stronger and more diverse economy that reduces economic inequality for all Americans in every community; and so much more,” Scott said.Even as she becomes vice-president, Harris’s portfolio remains unclear. Biden and Harris have described their ideal relationship as similar to that between Biden and Barack Obama when the latter was president. Biden was to be the last voice in the room on any major decision.But that dynamic will not be perfectly replicated. Biden spent decades in the Senate while Harris was in her first term when she first ran unsuccessfully for president and then was selected as Biden’s running mate.Unlike recent vice-presidents, though, Harris is expected to often play a deciding role in the Senate because of the 50-50 split.Harris will reside at the Naval Observatory, the traditional home of the vice-president. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, will join her there and become the first man married to a vice-president. He will be referred to as the second gentleman.Harris, a lawyer, is the former attorney general for California. She attended Howard University in Washington DC for her undergraduate degree and often references her time there.Harris becomes vice-president with a relatively new team in her office. Her chief of staff, Tina Flournoy, was not a member of her campaign staff. Harris’s chief spokeswoman, Symone Sanders, also a woman of color, served as a top adviser to Biden throughout his successful presidential campaign. Sanders began traveling with Harris near the end of the campaign and stayed on with Harris through the transition. More
