President Donald Trump said Friday he will skip President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, refusing to fulfill the outgoing president’s traditional role in the peaceful transition of power and undercutting his own message just one day earlier on the need for “national healing and unity.”
Trump, who has not appeared in public since a violent mob of his supporters besieged the Capitol on Wednesday and tried to halt the transfer of power, will be the first incumbent president since Andrew Johnson not to attend his successor’s inauguration.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Friday.
Biden said he was just fine with that, calling it “one of the few things we have ever agreed on.”
“It’s a good thing him not showing up,” he added, calling the president an ”embarrassment” to the nation and unworthy of the office.
Traditionally, the incoming and outgoing presidents ride to the U.S. Capitol together on Inauguration Day for the ceremony, a visible manifestation of the smooth change of leadership.
Biden will become president at noon on Jan. 20 regardless of Trump’s plans. But Trump’s absence represents one final act of defiance of the norms and traditions of Washington that he has flouted for four years.
Historian Douglas Brinkley said that while attending the inauguration “would be a wonderful olive branch to the country,” he wasn’t surprised by the decision.
“Donald Trump doesn’t want to be in Washington as the second-fiddle loser standing on stage with Joe Biden,” he said.
While Trump stays away, former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will be there to stand witness to the rite of democracy. The only other living president, 96-year-old Jimmy Carter, who has spent the pandemic largely at home in Georgia, will not attend but has extended “best wishes” to Biden.
Trump’s tweet that he would boycott the inauguration came as he holed up in the White House with a dwindling coterie of aides and as momentum grew on Capitol Hill to subject him to impeachment for a second time.
Trump on Thursday finally recognised Joe Biden as the President-Elect of the United States after encouraging his supporters to go to Capitol Hill during a heated speech where he claimed the US elections was stolen.
After the violent storming of the Capitol by his supporters who delayed Joe Biden’s certification by Congress and which claimed the lives of five people.
A day after many of his supporters turned their backs on him, Donald Trump has finally recognized, for the first time since the November 3 election, that Joe Biden will be President of the United States on January 20.
“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts confirm it, there will nonetheless be an orderly transition on January 20,” said Donald Trump.
“A new administration will be sworn in on January 20, and I will now focus on making sure the transition is orderly,” he added.
In the video released Thursday night, the president read a statement from a teleprompter.
Donald Trump’s tone was completely different from that of the fiery speech he had delivered the day before to the thousands of demonstrators gathered in the morning at the Ellipse, south of the White House.
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The outgoing president strongly condemned the rioters who entered the Capitol to sow chaos the day before.
