President Donald Trump who has repeatedly contested his defeat in the recent US presidential election, on Friday said he will not attend the inaugurat
President Donald Trump who has repeatedly contested his defeat in the recent US presidential election, on Friday said he will not attend the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, putting to rest any lingering questions about whether he would go.
Biden will take over from him on January 20, 2021, an event which the outgoing president ought to attend as is often the case.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” Trump tweeted.
His outburst comes a day after he agreed to hand over to Biden, but not without repeating his claim that the election was rigged, even without any evidence of fraud.
At least one prominent Republican, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., publicly implored Trump to attend the inauguration after the tweet, saying that doing so is a critical part of the tradition of peaceful transfer of power in the U.S.
“I am urging the President to reconsider his decision to skip the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. 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. I plan to attend and believe it is an important tradition that demonstrates the peaceful transfer of power to our people and to the world,” Scott said in a statement.
NBC News reported that Vice President Mike Pence would likely attend the inauguration if invited, although a spokesman for Pence said that Pence and second lady Karen Pence had not yet made a decision.
There have been only a handful of times in American history that an outgoing president did not attend the inauguration of his successor. John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson all skipped the event, while Richard Nixon departed the White House after his resignation and did not attend Gerald Ford’s swearing-in.
