Good evening. It is rare in this day and age to see something and know you are witnessing

history, history that will be remembered and studied and talked about for generations.

Tonight we're on the cusp of watching history, the eve of inauguration, unlike any we have

seen in our lifetime. Look at the national mall tonight and it is hard not to be moved. Hard

not to be moved. The outgoing president began his term bragging and lying about how many

people came to his inauguration. The incoming president begins his ascendance to power by

quietly and beautifully acknowledging the absence of people. 200,000 flags were celebratory

crowds would normally be. A number too large to count but still only half as large the

number of lives now lost to the pandemic or then 400,000 lives in all. 400,000 of those

Americans died in excuse me 100,000 of those Americans died in just the past five weeks.

The flags stand right now in silent witness to the darkness of this long and bitter night

but they will still be standing tomorrow at the dawn of something new.

President like Biden's first stop in Washington this evening was not far away at the Lincoln

Memorial for ceremony honoring all those we have lost to COVID. Mothers and fathers and brothers

and sisters, friends and grandparents. Dead. 400,000 in counting. The incoming president

finally doing what any other president would but the outgoing president never has which

is to simply acknowledge the gut wrenching enormity of what families around this country have

lost. The president elect knows pain and grief. He speaks the language of loss and he

knows that ignoring the magnitude of the loss has just made it all the more painful.

Each light at the reflecting pool representing a thousand of our friends and neighbors, children

and parents, people who were part of our lives and this country's beating heart were now

gone. 400 lights, 400,000 lives, 100,000 in just the last five weeks. In cities across the

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