Biden calls for unity as sworn in as 46th President of United States

Joe Biden has taken oath as the 46th president of the United States, ending a tumultuous four years of Donald Trump in the White House. The outgoing president snubbed the inauguration in a break with tradition, leaving Washington early on Wednesday headed for Florida.

Two weeks to the day after Trump supporters violently rampaged at the US Capitol to overturn the election results, Biden took the oath on the same very steps alongside Kamala Harris, who was sworn in moments earlier as the first woman vice president.

Biden, putting his hand on a family Bible, repeated after Chief Justice John Roberts the presidential oath -- that he will "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

"It's a new day in America," Biden wrote on Twitter before the inauguration as, in a sign of his push for unity, he prayed alongside congressional leaders at a Roman Catholic church.

Biden, who at 78 is the oldest president in US history and only the second Catholic, took office amid enormous challenges with the still-raging Covid-19 pandemic having claimed 400,000 lives in the United States.

Central Washington took on the dystopian look of an armed camp, protected by some 25,000 National Guard troops tasked with preventing any repeat of the January 6 attack that left five dead. The Supreme Court reported a bomb threat Wednesday morning.

Unprecedented atmosphere

With the general public essentially barred from attending due to the pandemic, Biden's audience at the National Mall instead was 200,000 flags planted to represent the absent crowds.

"It's a day a lot of us have been trying to visualize for a long time. We couldn't have guessed that the visual would be quite like this," Pete Buttigieg, the former presidential contender tapped by Biden as transportation secretary, told reporters.

Biden nonetheless brought in star power -- absent four years ago with Trump -- as Lady Gaga sang the national anthem and Tom Hanks prepared for a televised evening appearance with the new president.

Biden, who was vice president under Barack Obama and first ran for president in 1987, plans to kick off his tenure with a flurry of 17 orders to turn the page on Trump's divisive reign.

Officials said Biden will immediately rejoin the Paris climate accord and stop the US exit from the World Health Organization and set new paths on immigration, the environment, Covid-19 and the economy.

He will also end Trump's much-assailed ban on visitors from several majority-Muslim countries and halt construction of the wall that Trump ordered on the US-Mexico border to stem illegal immigration, the aides said.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, called Biden's inauguration "a demonstration of the resilience of American democracy," as well as "the resounding proof that, once again, after four long years, Europe has a friend in the White House."