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Washington (AP) - For many millions of Americans, but also for a number of Europeans, these images symbolize the end of a nightmare: the outgoing US President Trump climbs into Air Force One for the last time and takes off for Florida, three hours later Joe Biden becomes sworn in at the Capitol.
In the recent past, only his former boss, US President Barack Obama, when he replaced George W. Bush in the White House in 2009, has received more advance praise than Biden.
Biden is already celebrated for promising things like honesty and transparency - because nothing was taken for granted under Trump.
NEWS FROM THE CHAOS
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In the past few months, the world power USA has produced headlines that are usually more familiar from developing countries: a president who clings to power (while his foreign minister admonishes other states to respect the rules of the game of democracy);
Courtiers in government and parliament who spread the crudest conspiracy theories beyond logic;
fanatical supporters of the incumbent who resort to violence because their idol has lost a democratic election;
and as a low point then the storming of parliament, which amounts to an attempted coup.
BIDEN IS STARTING
Against this background, what Biden said when he was sworn in on Wednesday does not seem exaggerated: "Democracy has prevailed."
In the first hours after taking office, Biden not only reversed a number of controversial decisions by Trump.
He also offers a radical contrast program at the start.
While Trump has hardly bothered with government business in the past few weeks, Biden is going full throttle.
Just hours after moving into the White House on Wednesday, he signed far more than a dozen orders; on Thursday, things continued at a similar pace.
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FAUCI IS BACK ON THE STAGE
Many of the measures are aimed at the fight against the corona virus, in which Trump recently appeared to have lost all interest.
Managing the pandemic is the most pressing task for Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Your national strategy for this "is based on science, not politics, it is based on truth, not denial," said Biden on Thursday.
"Our plan is above all to restore public confidence."
In the corona crisis, experts such as the prominent immunologist Anthony Fauci would therefore again increasingly inform the population in the future.
TRUMP AND SCIENCE
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Trump had appointed Fauci to the White House task force, but then pushed him to the sidelines because he disliked the expert's relentless analyzes and warnings.
"People are fed up with hearing Fauci and these idiots," the then president ranted in October.
Trump is notorious for trusting his gut instinct more than scientific expertise.
His public deliberation as to whether people should inject disinfectants against the coronavirus has not been forgotten.
FAUCIS "LIBERATING FEELING"
For the first time under the Biden government, Fauci will appear before the press on Thursday.
When the journalists keep asking him how it differs from the old government, he finally says: «The idea that you can stand up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence is, what science is (...) is kind of a liberating feeling. "
Something else is different: "One of the innovations with this government is not to guess if you have no answer."
He agreed with Biden to be "completely transparent, open and honest when things go wrong".
Instead of shifting the blame on someone else, mistakes would be corrected.
Fauci is respected far beyond the borders of the USA.
Even before sunrise in Washington, he took part in a video slot for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva on Thursday.
The 80-year-old announced that his country would join the international corona vaccination initiative Covax.
The day before, Biden stopped the US withdrawal from the WHO initiated by Trump with one of his first decisions.
TRUMP AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Biden has also revised Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
Trump claimed in 2012 that climate change was a Chinese invention to harm the US economy.
Again and again, Trump spoke up at cold spells to scoff at where the global warming had gone.
Senator Ted Cruz has now proven that the opinions of his allies are not necessarily more well-founded.
He accuses Biden of being more interested in the opinion of Parisians than in American jobs in Pittsburgh - as if the climate agreement had the French capital in its name not only because it was passed there at the end of 2015.
A QUESTION OF RESPECT
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Biden demands that his employees treat each other with respect - that was also not customary with Trump, on the contrary: The Republican dismissed employees via tweet and was never too good to be insulted.
He called his former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson "stupid", his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions "a disaster", and his former Defense Secretary James Mattis "the most overrated general in our country".
Biden warns that anyone who disrespects colleagues will be fired immediately.
"Everyone, really everyone, has the right to be treated with decency and dignity."
END OF THE ATTACKS ON THE MEDIA
There is also a new tone towards journalists.
At her first press conference, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced that she would “bring truth and transparency back to the briefing room”.
There will be times when she and the reporters disagree, says Psaki.
"That's fine.
It's part of our democracy. "
Trump found it an affront if journalists disagreed with his opinion or showed him one of his countless lies.
He of all people then spoke of “fake news” and vilified the critical media as “enemies of the people”.
BIDENS THIN SKINNESS IN ELECTION CAMPAIGN
As a person, the Democrat and longtime Senator Biden has also been honored by Republicans.
Senator Lindsey Graham - who later became one of Trump's closest confidants and fell out with Biden - told the Huffington Post in 2015: "If you can't admire Joe Biden as a person, you have a problem."
Biden is the nicest person I have ever met in politics.
However, the new president can be thin-skinned, as the election campaign showed.
When a voter approached him about his son Hunter's questionable - and to this day not fully clarified - foreign business deals, Joe Biden scolded: "You are a damned liar, man."
HIGH EXPECTATIONS OF BIDEN
In view of Trump's behavior, it will be no art for Biden to continue to stand out positively from his predecessor.
However, he will not be measured by whether he is personable, sociable and warm-hearted, but whether he can keep his promises: to bring the pandemic under control, to revive the economy, to bring the nation together and to mend relationships with allies like Germany to name just a few of the most important goals.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210122-99-124712 / 2
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