Washington | Joe Biden ascends to the presidency on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) with an inaugural speech outlining how he will tackle the health and economic crises he inherits while attempting to knit the country back together, just two weeks after the outgoing President’s loyalists waged a deadly riot to block the change of power.

The incoming president will call on the US to abandon the divisiveness stoked by Donald Trump – whose four-year term ends with nearly 400,000 Americans dead of COVID-19, a sharp economic downturn and the worst political crisis since Watergate – after the Capitol attack.

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