Trump skipping Biden inaugural
President-elect says it’s one of few points of consensus
President Donald Trump is going out in fitting style for a leader who has gleefully, willfully smashed expectations about how to behave.
Trump’s attendance at President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration seemed almost unthinkable after the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday by a pro-trump mob seeking to overturn Biden’s victory.
But Trump removed any lingering doubt Friday morning, tweeting “to all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Watching a man he has called stupid and feeble take power was never going to be easy for Trump.
“Looking at President Trump’s actions and words, it was always highly unlikely he would accept a negative verdict on the election and that he would assist his successor’s transition,” said Tim Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University ’s Wagner School of Public Service.
“Trump had no interest in letting the job and its history and traditions shape him. Whatever belonged to the job that wasn’t consistent with his whims he rejected, rather than reconsidering his whims,” Naftali said. “It’s consistent that he does not show up for a ceremony he doesn’t believe in and doesn’t agree with and which doesn’t feature him as the star.”
Biden said Trump won’t be missed.
“One of the few things he and I have ever agreed on,” Biden said. “It’s a good thing in not showing up.”
The assault on the Capitol forced a temporary halt to the normally perfunctory process of certifying the results of the Nov. 3 election, the last step before a new president takes office. It left five people dead, the building damaged, and Democrats and even some Trump allies calling for the president’s removal from office.
Trump hasn’t appeared in public since he addressed a rally of supporters behind the White House on Wednesday with a cri de coeur about a stolen election and conspiracies against him from the press, Democrats and technology companies.
“You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” Trump said then, as he urged the crowd of thousands to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol.
In office, Trump has discarded the conventions of the office from the start.
Hewing to some version of regular order on Inauguration Day would have required Trump and first lady Melania Trump to receive Biden and Jill Biden at the White House ahead of the ceremony. Recent outgoing presidents have accompanied the incoming one for the short limousine ride from the White House to the Capitol.
Vice President Mike Pence has not yet said whether he will attend the ceremony.
Naftali said Biden is better off without the symbolic send-off from Trump.
“The inauguration is not supposed to be a celebration of the winning side,” Naftali said. “It’s designed to celebrate and consecrate the transition of power and that’s why it matters whether the president and the soon-to-beformer president attends.”