Tom and Curley reflect on the Joe Biden inauguration, and calls for unity

The Wednesday inauguration of President Joe Biden occurred in the midst of a contentious political climate, and brought with it reaction from all over the political map, often with calls for unity. KIRO Radio’s John Curley couldn’t contain his enthusiasm for this historic day.

“I feel better, I feel unified. … It’s a new day. It’s a great new day. Here we go. The federal government, bigger and better than ever, yeah!,” Curley joked. “It’s gonna be so much more peaceful. It was this year, four years ago that there were riots in Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis in Washington, D.C., and now we have peace among the land.”

“It was the beginning of the resistance, the beginning of Antifa, … people were fighting against Donald Trump. He was a fascist and he needed to be stopped. Now it’s different,” he continued. “By the way, things were so much better, so much more peaceful, I have to say. As somebody who has limited faith in the government, I always say to my kids, whenever you hear someone use the word ‘government,’ just replace it with the word ‘force,’ and it brings to perspective of what really is the government.”

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For KIRO Radio’s Tom Tangney, the speech highlighted an attempt to bring a sense of unity to the seemingly ongoing contentiousness, with Biden mentioning the need to end the “uncivil war.”

“I think it was clever, the uncivil war. We’ve been talking a lot about the Civil War of late and Abraham Lincoln — both parties like to cite him. The fact that he sort of referenced that by calling it an uncivil war is a nice play on words. I thought that was strong,” Tangney said.

Curley concurred with the tone of the speech, but found notions that Biden would be a president for everybody to be insincere, and believes both sides need to take responsibility for the political climate.

“I thought, overall, it had a nice tone, which was fairly boring, which is OK, but I think the people on the left have to take responsibility for the fact that in order to have a war, you have to have two opposing forces,” Curley said. “They’re just as much to blame for the war as the other side. You have one group fighting for one thing, another group fighting for another.”

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“Whenever the president gets up and talks about ‘I’m gonna be for everybody,’ that would be like the head coaches of Michigan and Ohio State. So Michigan wins the game and the head coach of Michigan … stands up and he’s going to give a speech. Now he’s giving a speech to Michigan and Ohio State and says, ‘I’m gonna be the coach for everybody.’ No, you’re not, I’m sorry,” Curley said. “The other side elected you. You won. Now you are the president and you get a chance to have this position, but everybody else, the 74 million, are like, ‘Are you kidding? I voted against you and everything that you stand for.'”

Listen to the Tom and Curley Show weekdays from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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