Convicted Felon Sworn In as President

Outgoing President Joe Biden greeted incoming President Donald Trump at the north portico of the White House on Monday with an enthusiastic “Welcome home!” The first families enjoyed tea together, and a few hours later Trump, a convicted felon who attempted to overturn the results of a free and fair election four years ago, was sworn in as the 47th president inside the Capitol his supporters violently attacked in an effort to keep him in power.

The 45th and now 47th president of the United States swore the oath of office on a Bible held by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The ceremony at the Capitol Rotunda was relatively subdued, after outdoor festivities were moved indoors because of the frigid conditions currently battering Washington, D.C. The president, who has been described as an aspiring tyrant by scores of his former staffers and has expressed as a desire to act as a “dictator” for the first day of presidency, was welcomed back into office surrounded not by the people, but by celebrities, corporate executives, and the politicians and Supreme Court justices who will help him remake America in the image of right-wing extremism.

Country singer Carrie Underwood will sing “America the Beautiful,” Lee Greenwood will play “God Bless the U.S.A.,” and billionaire Elon Musk was granted a spot amid Trump’s family alongside Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg. 

Despite the stomach-churning normalcy of the proceedings, signs of the anxieties surrounding Trump’s return to power were evident. On Monday morning, Biden issued a series of preemptive pardons intended to protect public figures Trump has openly marked for political retribution. These include Former National Institute of Health Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, and former Rep. Liz Cheney. 

Michael Fanone, a retired D.C. police officer who was assaulted by pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6, told The New York Times that it’s “insane that we live in a country where the president of the United States feels the need to offer a pre-emptive pardon to American citizens who testified in an investigation regarding an insurrection which was incited by the incoming president because he’s promised to enact, or exact, vengeance on those participants and the body that investigated them.”

Protests peppered the nation’s capital, but were nearly invisible to the wider national audience given the stringent security perimeters established around the National Mall and the Capitol. On Saturday thousands of protesters gathered for “The People’s March,” formerly The Women’s March, at the Lincoln Memorial, braving freezing winds and freezing temperature to voice their opposition to the incoming administration.

Trump notably refused to attend Biden’s ceremonies in 2020 after falsely claiming that reelection had been fraudulently stolen from him, and helping foment an attempt by his most ardent supporters to usurp the election on Jan. 6 of 2021. Trump has teased that he will pardon the MAGA rioters who attacked the Capitol four years ago.