The cover story: How President Biden handles a divided America will define his legacy

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The Cover Story How President Biden Handles a Divided America Will Define His Legacy By Charlotte Alter National Correspondent, TIME It's been a long two weeks. Two Wednesdays ago, a mob of Trumpists sacked the Capitol; last Wednesday, the House of Representatives impeached President Trump for a second time for inciting the violence; this Wednesday, Biden took the Oath of Office as the 46th President of the United States. Covering the Biden beat over the last 10 months, I quickly learned that "unity" was the central message of Biden's campaign. Biden talked about unity in nearly every speech, at nearly every event, on nearly every day of his campaign; he talked about unity so much that it became impossible to write about, a theme as obvious as "world peace." But, as I traveled the country covering the campaign, I began to hear disturbing rumblings from Trump voters. Isolated by the pandemic, enamored with Trump, more and more Americans seemed to be taken in by online conspiracy theories, increasingly divorced from reality. I began to wonder if unity could exist in a country so riven by unlogic; how can the nation unify around a shared political agenda if they can't agree on a shared set of facts? The fate of unity, then, depends on which way you look at it. On the one hand: Trump's "Big Lie" that the election was stolen had divided the country even further, maybe even ripped our shared reality. On the other hand: in the moments where it mattered most—on Election Day, as officials counted the votes, and on Inauguration Day—the system held, and "democracy prevailed," as Biden put it. The system wobbled—but it didn't fall. Read the Story » Share the cover story

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