What Went Down During Joe Biden’s Inauguration

Biden is echoing some of his campaign messages that acknowledged, in detail, moments of “crisis and challenge” in American history, but claimed that the country had overcome them.

Perry wrote about this earlier, but so far in this speech we’re seeing the same four priorities new White House chief of staff Ron Klain laid out in a memo released over the weekend: “the COVID-19 crisis, the resulting economic crisis, the climate crisis and a racial equity crisis.”

We’re already hearing a huge contrast with Trump’s 2017 inaugural address, where he painted a dark picture of “American carnage.” Ironically, that was a moment of of stability and economic prosperity — now, of course, we’re in a global pandemic, an economic crisis and a moment of intense political turbulence and division. But Biden’s tone so far is optimistic while still acknowledging the challenges of the moment. “Uniting to fight the foes we face, anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness,” he said. “With unity, we can do great things, important things.”