Biden Says He Wants To Unite America. He Might Find Unity Hard To Come By

4 min readJan 20, 2021

President-elect Joe Biden speaks Tuesday at a National Guard/Reserve Center in New Castle, Del., named after his late son, Beau, before departing for Washington, D.C.

Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

If you haven’t heard, Joe Biden would like to unite America.

The inaugural committee says the slogan “reflects the beginning of a new national journey that restores the soul of America, brings the country together, and creates a path to a brighter future.”

If only it were that easy.

When Biden is sworn in at 12:01 p.m. ET Wednesday as the 46th president of the United States, it will be with the understanding that the country is as divided as it’s ever been, as pessimistic as it’s been in three decades and facing health, economic and racial crises.

It will also be a very different inauguration than has ever been seen in U.S. history. Four years ago, President Trump was arguing over his crowd size compared with Barack Obama’s record-setting turnout of supporters on the National Mall.

This time, because of the coronavirus pandemic and security concerns, the Mall is shut down — as is much of downtown Washington, D.C.

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After the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by a mob of pro-Trump supporters, the entire Capitol complex, a place that is generally open to the public, has been locked down.

There is now 7-foot high, “non-scalable” steel fencing topped with razor wire surrounding the Capitol.

Razor wire is seen last week after being installed on the fence surrounding the grounds of the U.S. Capitol due to security threats.

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

With threats looming, armed troops are stationed every few feet. Up to 25,000 troops are expected Wednesday in Washington to fortify the inauguration.

It’s like a scene from a war zone in another country. But in fact that’s more troops than the U.S. currently has deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and all of Africa combined.

Getting through Wednesday is the first part. Expect a speech that is a 180-degree turn from Trump’s “American carnage” address four years ago.

Biden’s speech will stress unity, but there will be a glaring, yet invisible sign of just how difficult that will be.

In a fit of protest, Trump won’t be there. It’s the first time in 150 years that a sitting president is not attending the inauguration of his successor.

The Trumps have cast aside other traditional signs of the peaceful transfer of power. When Biden’s daughter Ashley was asked Tuesday on NBC’s Today by Jenna Bush Hager, the daughter of a former Republican president, whether soon-to-be first lady Jill Biden had heard from Melania Trump, she said, “No, I don’t think they’re doing the traditional protocol, which is unfortunate, but I think we’re all OK with it.”

President Trump convinced tens of millions of his followers of false claims about a stolen election and widespread fraud, none of which is true. Key members of his own administration called it the most secure election in history.

Much of the mob that stormed the Capitol echoed Trump’s talking points, which were only amplified by conservative media in the runup to the Jan. 6 violence.

The misinformation consumed by many on the right has been fed for decades through prime-time cable dressed up as straight news. Facebook memes and outfits even further on the fringe than Fox News are growing in popularity. Conspiracies are being mainstreamed.

There is no good answer for unraveling that. So the country will remain sharply divided.

Trump leaves office with a 38% approval rating in the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, and Biden gets more positive reviews than Trump so far. A majority approve of how he handled the transition, think he’ll do more to unify than divide and more people like him than don’t, but not by much.

But strikingly, 8 in 10 Republicans approve of the job Trump was doing, and 7 in 10 of them don’t accept the results of the presidential election.

So Republicans have little political incentive to work with Biden.

Biden Says He Wants To Unite America. He Might Find Unity Hard To Come By

Written by hridoy hassan