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Trump is reportedly stiffing Rudy Giuliani for his legal work to overturn the election
January 14, 2021 -
Watch Biden arrive at the White House for the 1st time as president
4:48 p.m. -
Biden's team reportedly fears the new COVID-19 variant is even worse than they thought
4:40 p.m. -
Clyburn says George W. Bush called him 'the savior' over his Biden endorsement
4:24 p.m. -
There's a secret message for coders on the new White House website
3:59 p.m. -
Trump made 30,573 false claims as president, by The Washington Post's count
3:54 p.m. -
Amazon offers Biden help with COVID-19 vaccine distribution
3:18 p.m. -
Only a sprinkling of Trump supporters showed up at state capitols to protest Biden's inauguration
2:20 p.m.
An "increasingly isolated, sullen, and vengeful" President Trump is serving his final few days in office in an emptying White House, taking out his anger on his shrinking inner circle, The Washington Post reports. "Trump has never been more isolated than this week," The New York Times confirms, "and the White House Counsel's Office is not preparing to defend him in the Senate trial" after he was impeached Wednesday for incitement of insurrection.
Trump is specifically furious at Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), both newspapers report, but he's also angry that his allies in conservative media and politics aren't forcefully defending him after a mob of his supporters laid siege to the Capitol last week. "His relationship with lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of his most steadfast defenders, is also fracturing," the Post reports, adding:
Trump has instructed aides not to pay Giuliani's legal fees, two officials said, and has demanded that he personally approve any reimbursements for the expenses Giuliani incurred while traveling on the president's behalf to challenge election results in key states. They said Trump has privately expressed concern with some of Giuliani's moves and did not appreciate a demand from Giuliani for $20,000 a day in fees for his work attempting to overturn the election. [The Washington Post]
Trump was "offended" by Giuliani's $20,000-a-day request "and told aides not to pay him at all," the Times confirms, adding that Giuliani denied making that request but it "was in writing." And "White House officials have started blocking Mr. Giuliani's calls to the president," the Times adds, citing a Trump adviser. Read more about Trump's deteriorating relationships and shrinking circle of allies at The Washington Post and The New York Times. Peter Weber
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn into office Wednesday, marking the end of former President Donald Trump's term. After the inauguration ceremony, Biden and Harris embarked on a short parade around the Capitol Hill area that ended at the White House. That's where Biden and his family got to step inside for the first time since Biden was vice president himself four years ago.
President Biden and @DrBiden arrive at the White House. https://t.co/xvklJYaA5z#InaugurationDay pic.twitter.com/6DGb7JjWC5
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 20, 2021
Shortly after Biden's arrival, Harris and the second gentleman Doug Emhoff made it to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The vice president has a set of offices in the building next to the White House, but lives in a house on the grounds of the Naval Observatory about two miles northwest.
WATCH: Vice President Kamala Harris arrives at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, after being sworn in today as the first Black, female and South Asian VP in U.S. history. https://t.co/6hMTteTAC3 pic.twitter.com/N6LOjZt4Qz
— CNBC (@CNBC) January 20, 2021
The White House got a thorough cleaning after the Trump administration departed Wednesday morning. Biden administration members will be required to wear masks once they start working, unlike Trump's staff. Kathryn Krawczyk
President Biden's team is reportedly worried the COVID-19 pandemic they're inheriting is worse than they anticipated, and some advisers say a new, more contagious variant of the virus — as opposed to vaccine distribution logistics — is the main reason why, Bloomberg reports.
Biden has promised to try to curb the virus' spread through a push to inoculate 100 million Americans in 100 days, encourage widespread mask usage, increase testing, and reopen schools. But the fear is that the new variant, which was initially discovered in the United Kingdom, but has made its way to the U.S. and elsewhere, will upend the entire plan and, subsequently, damage his prospects of achieving other legislative priorities like immigration reform and infrastructure development, Bloomberg notes.
While the mutation is seemingly at the center of the apprehension, Biden's aides also reportedly blame their predecessors for putting them in a bad spot. Some aides, per Bloomberg, privately allege the Trump administration "dragged its heels in showing them details of the federal response and its data." Ultimately, they reportedly opted against making those concerns public because they wanted to avoid publicly criticizing the Trump administration during the transition, potentially motivating them to cut them out of the loop completely.
A former senior Trump official told Bloomberg that description of the situation was just the Biden team's way of lowering expectations, adding that they were given unprecedented access to pandemic-related information. Read more at Bloomberg. Tim O'Donnell
Former President George W. Bush described House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) as "the savior" for helping President Biden make his way to the Oval Office, according to Clyburn himself.
The South Carolina Democrat revealed Wednesday he spoke with Bush ahead of the inauguration ceremony and that the former president called him the "savior" because of his key endorsement of Biden's campaign, The Associated Press reports.
"George Bush said to me today, he said, 'You know, you're the savior," Clyburn explained. "Because if you had not nominated Joe Biden, we would not be having this transfer of power today.'"
Clyburn backed Biden prior to the 2020 South Carolina Democratic primary, which Biden went on to win in what was widely seen as the major turning point in his presidential campaign; former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) subsequently dropped out of the race and endorsed him.
Bush, according to Clyburn, also described Biden as "the only one who could have defeated the incumbent president." Brendan Morrow
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) says President George W. Bush told him he's "the savior" for his help in getting Joe Biden the nomination.
Clyburn says Bush told him Biden was "the only one who could have defeated" Trump. pic.twitter.com/lXeRGLGCLu
— The Recount (@therecount) January 20, 2021
A new White House means a new www.whitehouse.gov. But most people who browse the spiffy website won't know that there's a secret message hidden right under their eyes.
Snuck into the HTML code is a "neat little Easter egg," Protocol reports — a message that says "If you're reading this, we need your help building back better," followed by a link to the U.S. Digital Service, the executive branch's elite technology unit.
Another hidden message on the page points anyone creeping on the HTML toward the White House's analytics website, which allows viewers to see how many people are on government websites at any given time, as well as what pages are the most viewed (if all this tech talk is Greek to you, you can snoop the page the easier way, by clicking here; turns out a lot of people try to track their USPS packages!):
In addition to the hidden message from the U.S. Digital Service, the new White House website’s source code also includes a plug for the federal government’s web traffic dashboard https://t.co/NtUta04bvA pic.twitter.com/c8ueoZljox
— Benjamin Freed (@brfreed) January 20, 2021
President Biden's tough tech agenda in office will indeed need all the help it can get — read more about what he wants to accomplish in office on the cyber front here. Jeva Lange
The numbers are in.
Former President Donald Trump racked up an astonishing 30,573 false claims throughout the four years of his presidency, according to The Washington Post's fact checker. They include repeated inflations like Trump's insistence that more of his border wall was built than actually had been, flat-out lies about just how many votes he received in the 2020 election, and everything in between.
The final count. Never would have believed this number was possible when we started four years ago. https://t.co/rZaAOI0gjd pic.twitter.com/2eCUxwtmSo
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) January 20, 2021
Trump's false claims increased most dramatically in the months leading up to the 2020 election. They plateaued again afterward as Trump stayed out of the public eye, even as he falsely insisted he won the election and that fraud had cost him votes.
Trump most often repeated his claim of building "the greatest economy in the history of the world," saying it 493 times, the Post counts. False claims about his political opponents wanting fully open borders and the actual size of his tax cuts also topped the most repeated list, which you can explore at The Washington Post. Kathryn Krawczyk
Amazon has extended an offer to help President Biden meet his goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans against COVID-19 in his first 100 days in office.
Dave Clark, the CEO of Amazon's consumer business, sent a letter to Biden on Wednesday, congratulating him and Vice President Kamala Harris on their inauguration before detailing how the tech giant plans to expedite the vaccine campaign.
The strategy would include on-site inoculations for any of the company's 800,000 employees who don't have the luxury of working from home during the pandemic. And looking beyond Amazon, Clark added that "we are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist" the Biden administration.
Biden has promised to ramp up the vaccine effort, which has been slower-than-expected, though it's unclear if he'll sign off on Amazon's requests and offer. Tim O'Donnell
NEW @NBCNews: Amazon has extended offer to President Joe Biden to assist with national Covid vaccine distribution.
In letter to @POTUS, Amazon Consumer CEO Dave Clark says "Amazon stands ready to assist you…”https://t.co/1DZ7apVy4H pic.twitter.com/DPoGi9yT4G
— Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) January 20, 2021
In the wake of the deadly riot in the U.S. Capitol building earlier this month, the FBI had warned that armed protests were being planned in every state capital. But though it was still early in much of America as President Biden was sworn in just before noon Eastern time, the handful of pro-Trump demonstrators who actually showed up were largely disappointed by the turnout, to say the least:
Mark Leggiero is the one lone Trump supporter out in front of the NYS Capitol. He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed. He said he drove 45 minutes for a peaceful protest pic.twitter.com/hDtCLYFpLq
— Morgan Mckay (@morganfmckay) January 20, 2021
So far, two protesters are here at the Kansas State Capitol to protest the election. pic.twitter.com/huii3mpjIS
— Nolan Roth KAKE (@NolanRothKAKE) January 20, 2021
At the State Capitol in Sacramento, a lone Trump supporter wearing a red MAGA hat protested as President Biden took the oath of office Wednesday.
Live #InaugurationDay updates >> https://t.co/WowWEMPI7l pic.twitter.com/QaSrlvomgd
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) January 20, 2021
Greetings from Concord, N.H. https://t.co/jD3k47cLIc pic.twitter.com/MxFe4bqROF
— Ruth Graham (@publicroad) January 20, 2021
At 12 Noon the scene outside of the Michigan State Capitol is a quiet one. Just a handful of demonstrators out along S. Capitol Avenue. @WWJ950 pic.twitter.com/JCedFflugr
— Jon Hewett (@JonHewettWWJ) January 20, 2021
In other states, nobody showed up at all:
As ceremonies continue in DC, all quiet at the Washington state Capitol in Olympia. Zero demonstrators. #InaugurationDay pic.twitter.com/fwxolDsLDt
— Drew Mikkelsen (@drewmikkelsenk5) January 20, 2021
There's a large presence of law enforcement and members of the Ky. National Guard at the Kentucky state Capitol in Frankfort – but so far, all is quiet. @heraldleader pic.twitter.com/EugXcLLKbO
— Ryan C. Hermens (@ryanhermens) January 20, 2021
All is quiet at the Utah State Capitol. No protesters that I’ve seen. The @UTNationalGuard is here again to respond, if needed. So far, I’m told no chatter of any local #Inauguration related protests. @fox13 #utpol #Utah pic.twitter.com/ym9pCyFyuD
— Ben Winslow (@BenWinslow) January 20, 2021
Meanwhile, in Montana, the only protester to show up ... was a counterprotester. Jeva Lange
INAGURATION DAY: So far, a quiet morning at the Montana State Capitol. pic.twitter.com/KXsy7DdB2w
— KFBB (@KFBB) January 20, 2021