Washington: President Donald Trump said Friday he won’t attend the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, after his supporters mounted a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol earlier this week.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” Trump tweeted.
With pressure mounting in Congress for the president to be removed from office and top administration officials resigning over the assault on the Capitol, Trump posted a video Thursday evening in which he conceded Biden would be inaugurated and pledged “a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”
They were his most conciliatory remarks since his re-election defeat, which prompted a months-long effort by the president and his allies to overturn the will of voters in a futile legal and public relations campaign.
The last living U.S. president not to attend his successor’s inauguration was Richard Nixon, who resigned due to the Watergate scandal and left Washington, D.C., before Gerald Ford took the oath of office. The last president to miss a regularly scheduled inauguration following an election was Woodrow Wilson, who skipped Warren G. Harding’s 1921 ceremony due to health concerns.
Vice President Mike Pence’s office hasn’t said whether he’ll attend the Biden’s inauguration, though a spokesman for Pence appeared to deny a report in Politico on Thursday saying he planned to be there.
“You can’t attend something you haven’t received an invitation to,” Pence spokesman Devin O’Malley said on Twitter.
A spokeswoman for Biden’s inaugural committee told Gray Media Group Inc. that there is not customarily a formal invitation to outgoing presidents and vice presidents, and that the vice president’s office had not informed the committee if Pence planned to attend.
The only other living Republican president — former President George W. Bush — has said he and former first lady Laura Bush expect to attend the event. Former President Jimmy Carter, who is 96, is expected to miss the ceremony for the first time in more than four decades due to health concerns.- Bloomberg
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He didn’t say he wouldn’t attend Biden’s inauguration. He said he would not attend the inauguration on January 20.
As you copied correctly from his tweet:
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” (no word of Biden)
How can one not see the difference or why is his statement willingly changed?