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- Five key takeaways from Biden’s historic inauguration
- US records second-highest daily toll of Covid deaths at 4,229
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If you didn’t see the inauguration TV special last night, then Adrian Horton has reviewed it, and found it “dull yet competent”. A verdict, you suspect, that many people would be happy to see delivered on the whole term of president Joe Biden. Horton writes:
The special benefitted from perhaps the perfect choice as host: Tom Hanks, the beloved everyman actor and one of the few cultural figures on whom most Americans can agree (and also the celebrity whose coronavirus diagnosis on 11 March 2020 was, for many, the moment the direness of the pandemic really sank in). In front of the Lincoln Memorial, the actor most associated with bone-deep decency and ordinary heroism held together a staccato and still-surreal pandemic mix of socially distanced live footage and desktop webcam aesthetics.
Related: The star-packed inauguration special: a dull yet competent plea for unity
Here’s something to get your ears around – a US special from our Politics Weekly podcast team.
Yesterday was a day that many had waited a long time for. Jonathan Freedland and Richard Wolffe break down what happened on Inauguration Day 2021, as Donald Trump fled to Florida, and Joe Biden signed 17 executive orders, overturning much of the work of his predecessor.
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