At precisely noon EST on Wednesday, Donald Trump and Mike Pence will cease to be president and vice president of the United States respectively. At the same time, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be sworn in as the 46th President and 49th Vice President of the United States. The swearing-in of Biden and Harris will flip open a new page in American history and will also simultaneously mark the end of the Trump era.
The Trump presidency will be long remembered into the future as one overshadowed by its waning days, mired by false claims of election fraud, mishandling of the once-in-a-lifetime COVID-19 pandemic, and the incitement of an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
In his final year in office, Trump, the first and so far only president without former military service or governmental experience, has overseen what was one of the most tumultuous times in American history and ruled over an increasingly polarized nation. The COVID-19 pandemic, which he first denied, then mishandled badly, including refusing to endorse mask-wearing, has now resulted in 400,000 American deaths, equivalent to almost one 9/11 attack a day and 24 million cases.
The 2020 election, conducted amid unprecedented times, saw the president repeatedly and incorrectly accusing mail-in voting of being rife with fraud and asserted that the election was rigged against him before, during, and after the election. When the election was called on Nov. 7, 2020, he refused to admit defeat, continuing to assert voter fraud and election-rigging, culminating in a storming of the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress was certifying Biden’s electoral victory.
On his last day in office, just hours before he was scheduled to leave the White House, he issued a series of 11th-hour pardons, granting clemency to over 143 people, mostly his close allies and 2016 election donors, including Steve Bannon, a Trump strategist facing trials on charges of misleading and depriving donors of large sums of money for the construction of the border wall.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives twice, once in 2019 for allegedly soliciting the help of Ukraine in interfering in the 2016 election, and the other two weeks ago for inciting the insurrection at the Capitol. He was acquitted of all charges in the Senate in 2020 for his first impeachment, while, as of writing, the House has yet to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate for his second impeachment.
Among the other things the Trump administration did include repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a major health care reform bill enacted into law under the Obama administration in 2010, ordered a travel ban on citizens from five Muslim-majority countries, which at its first pass, even banned American residents from returning to the U.S. He worked with the Republican-controlled Senate to reshape the federal judiciary in a way likely to last decades, including appointing hundreds of federal judges and three Supreme Court justices.
He repealed NAFTA and replaced it with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and other Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, while simultaneously beginning a trade war with China and moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and even attempted to leave the World Health Organization, a change which will not be implemented due to the Biden administration being expected to rescind the leave notice. U.S. troops were also withdrawn from Syria under his watch, while a number of Arab nations normalized relations with Israel.
With Trump’s departure from office, he will lose all executive protections and walk into a financial minefield of debt, taxes, and more of unprecedented scale. The New York Times‘ investigation late last year revealed Trump’s tax records, which he had long fought to keep from the public’s eye. The records reveal Trump is over $400 million in debt, which he personally guaranteed and must be repaid in a few years, while also being out of much of his cash and easily-liquefied assets and in the midst of a decade-old IRS audit which could cause him over $100 million to resolve.
Though Trump was able to previously rescue his failing businesses from his father’s money or licensing deals from his television personality, those are no longer possible revenue streams for him. The divisive rhetoric he pursued during his presidency now lies at the very heart of the Trump Organization, which is now facing backlash after the Capitol riot. His major funders have stopped donating, the PGA canceled an upcoming golf tournament at a Trump-owned golf course, New York City terminated all contracts with Trump’s company, and Deutsche Bank, the only bank still willing to lend to Trump, announced it will no longer lend to him.
He also faces legal threats, including investigations in New York state and city for tax fraud and misuse of campaign finance, and even possibly being charged by the federal government for his role in the Capitol riot.
As he leaves the White House bound for Florida on Wednesday morning, a new administration will take office in just a couple hours, bringing with it the most diverse presidential cabinet ever in American history, the first-ever female vice president, and an expected new wave of policy changes, all under a Democratic-controlled Congress for the first time since the Democrats lost badly in the 2010 midterms.
Biden will be inheriting a deeply divided nation of magnitudes not seen since the civil war, reeling in the effects of a politicized deadly pandemic almost taking the equivalent toll of a 9/11 attack each day. As the U.S. crosses a deadly milestone of 400,000 total COVID-19 deaths just a day before the new administration, Biden paid a visit to the Lincoln Memorial Tuesday night honoring the Americans who lost their lives to the pandemic.
The new inauguration will take place in a locked-down Washington. Stemming from the deadly riot at the Capitol earlier this month, 25,000 National Guard troops have been sent to the nation’s capital area to stop any potential domestic terrorism threats. These national guardsmen are all currently being vetted by the Pentagon for fear of any ties with domestic terrorism organizations, with 12 being removed from inauguration duty among 17,000 total guardsmen vetted out of caution.
The key buildings of the American government, including the White House and Capitol, are surrounded by feet of fencing. Blockades all around town, random checks, closures of subway stations, bus route diversions, ramped-up security, and eerily quiet streets are the new norm as Washington braces for an unprecedented inauguration. The 50 state capitols are all on high-alert, too, for fear of any civil unrest on Inauguration Day, with national guards being activated in numerous states.
The new face of Washington is a stark contrast to that of previous inaugurations, a grim reminder of the internal turmoil America is currently facing, and the need to rebuild a deeply divided nation.
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