I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, January 21st.

So yesterday was very moving, right, and a sigh of relief for most Americans, right, after two months of the big

lie that led to the first unpeaceful transfer of power in the lifetime of any person alive

today, America, you can exhale. Though we don't know how much white supremacist and other right-wing

terrorism may be yet to come, let's face it, even without

the dog Whistler in chief. Maybe he'll start a new reality show called The Biggest Soros loser.

But for President of the United States, Joe Biden, Bruce Springsteen, John Legend, and Amanda

Gorman have all gone home.

John Bon Jovi, too, after that clunker, but we'll forgive him.

And now Biden has to deliver on defeating the coronavirus and on the twin promises in his inaugural address that might seem contradictory at first, bringing unity and fighting the forces from one side that he sees

as most responsible for our national divide. Here's a notable moment from the speech where he

says both things. He calls for unity, but in the context of standing strong against an internal

enemy that needs to be named and defeated.

And this is the historic moment when he became the first president

to utter the words white supremacy in an inaugural address.

A cry for survival comes from the planet itself,

a cry that can't be any more desperate or any more clear.

And now a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism,

that we must confront and we will defeat.

To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America, requires so

much more than words. It requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy. Unity.

Unity. So he posed good against evil

...