» Trump to skip Biden’s inauguration.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that he’ll 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 hasn’t 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 attendhis successor’s inauguration.
Biden said hewas 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 andunworthy 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 11a.m. CST on Jan. 20regardless 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 thatwhile 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 witness the rite of democracy. The only other living president, 96-year-old Jimmy Carter, who has spent the pandemic largely at home in Georgia, won’t 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.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” Trump said in a tweet.
It may have been his last. The company announced Friday evening that it had permanently suspended Trump fromits platform, citing the “risk of further incitement of violence.”
Trump’s decisionwas not a surprise: Formore than two months, he has falsely claimed he won reelection and advanced baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, even though his own administration has said the electionwas fairly run.
Sen. Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, urged Trump to reconsider.
“He is, of course, not constitutionally required to attend and I can imagine losing an election is very hard, but I believe he should attend,“Scott said in a statement. The senator called the rite “an important tradition that demonstrates the peaceful transfer of power to our people and to the world.”
Vice President Mike Pence, who defied Trump onWednesday when he refused to intervene in the congressional process to certify Biden’s win, was expected to attend the inauguration, according to one person close to him. But Pence spokesperson Devin O’Malley said in a statement Friday that the vice president and the second lady “have yet to make a decision regarding their attendance.”
Biden said Pence was “welcome to come,” and he’d be honored to have him.
“I think it’s important,” he said, that “the historical precedents and how and the circumstances” by which administrations transition “be maintained.”
Brinkley said Trump’s decision makes him look like a “sore loser.”
“It will also show that he’s an authoritarian at heart who doesn’t believe in the democratic process. If you don’t honor the idea of a peaceful transition, then you don’t honor the Constitution or the spirit of democracy itself,” he said.