Outgoing President Joe Biden greeted incoming President Donald Trump on the North Portico of the White House on Monday with a warm "Welcome home!" The first families drank tea together, and hours later, Trump, A convicted felon who sought to overturn the results of a free and fair election four years ago was sworn in as the 47th president inside the Capitol, under fire from his supporters. Let him remain in power.

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

The ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda was relatively low-key as outdoor festivities were moved indoors due to the current cold weather in Washington, D.C. A "dictator" on his first day as president, he was welcomed back into office surrounded not by people but by celebrities, business executives, politicians and Supreme Court justices who would help him reshape America into a country marked by right-wing extremism. image.

Country singer Carrie Underwood will sing "America the Beautiful," Lee Greenwood will sing "God Bless America," and billionaire Elon Musk will join Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has earned a place in the Trump family along with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

As stomach-churning as the whole process is, the signs of anxiety surrounding Trump's return to power are palpable. On Monday morning, Biden issued a series of preemptive pardons aimed at protecting public figures that Trump has publicly labeled political vendettas. They include former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired general Mark Milley and former Rep. Liz Cheney.

Michael Fanone, a retired Washington, D.C., police officer who was attacked by a pro-Trump mob on January 6 new york times “It’s crazy that we live in a country where the president of the United States feels the need to offer preemptive pardons to American citizens who testify in an investigation into an insurrection incited by the incoming president because he promised to enact, or rather, retaliation against those involved and the agencies investigating them.”

Protests swept the nation's capital, but were virtually invisible to the wider nation as a tight security perimeter was established around the National Mall and the Capitol. Thousands of protesters braved wind and freezing temperatures to gather at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday for the "People's March" (formerly known as the "Women's March") to express their opposition to the incoming administration.

Trump notably refused to attend Biden's ceremony in 2020 after he falsely claimed he was cheated out of re-election and helped incite his most ardent supporters to attempt to usurp the January 6, 2021, election. Trump joked that he would pardon Biden for the "MAGA" rioters who attacked the Capitol four years ago.