Joe Biden, the 46th President of the United States, fronts the cover of TIME’s latest issue, in a stirring illustration symbolising the mess left behind by the Trump administration.
Alongside two words, “Day One”, the newly inaugurated President stands in the oval office of the White House looking out a window in thought. Behind him stands a graffitied Resolute desk, topped with discarded fast food and documents, amid a chaotic room filled with stacked papers.
A phone and a megaphone are on the ground, alongside a MAGA hat. A ‘T’ is spray painted on a curtain. A fire appears to be burning outside the window, where Biden stands looking out.
TIME's new cover: Day one https://t.co/VazxGDJzZf pic.twitter.com/R6jVrzXXZc
— TIME (@TIME) January 21, 2021
The illustration was created by Tim O’Brien for TIME, and features online in the cover essay, ‘How President Biden Handles a Divided America Will Define His Legacy’, by the magazine’s Charlotte Alter.
According to the artist, it is meant to allude to the mess left behind by the previous administration, which must now be cleaned up.
“Biden now leads a country divided between Americans who believe in facts and Americans who distrust them, between those who want a multiracial Republic and those who seek to invalidate nonwhite votes, between those with faith in democratic institutions and those who put faith only in Trump,” Alter writes.
The news comes after Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on 20 January (local time), in what Alter said “was a first step toward restoring a semblance of normalcy to a shaken democracy”.
You can check out the essay, in full, here.
Featured image source: TIME.com/Tim O’Brien
