The inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, set to commence on Wednesday, will be missing one notable aspect that has been part of nearly every inauguration in recent history: the presence of the outgoing president as a sign of the peaceful transfer of power.
President Donald Trump announced in a tweet on January 8 that he would not be attending Biden’s inauguration ceremony. “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” Trump wrote, in what became his last social media post on Twitter before he was banned from the platform (due to his issuing a number of tweets that could be viewed as inciting violence).
Upon hearing the news that Trump wouldn’t attend his inauguration, Biden at the time described the decision as “one of the few things he and I have ever agreed on.”
“It’s a good thing, him not showing up,” Biden added.
Yet in spite of those words, Biden’s transition team is attempting to produce a ceremony that will focus on a push for national unity, following a highly contentious election year in which messages filled with vitriol and anger were regularly shared between the candidates.
“The inaugural gives us a fresh start, an ability to begin closing a very dark chapter in our history and start a new journey,” Stephanie Cutter, co-executive producer of Biden’s inauguration, said earlier this month.
Trump’s refusal to take part in the inauguration of his successor is not without precedent, however, although it is extremely rare. With the exception of those who died while in office, only four prior presidents have not attended the inaugural ceremony for their successor.
Richard Nixon, who resigned from office in 1974, left the White House immediately after, opting not to stay for Gerald Ford’s swearing-in ceremony. Before that, the last time a president didn’t attend the inauguration of his successor was more than 100 years ago, when Andrew Johnson skipped the swearing in of Ulysses S. Grant, choosing instead to sign last-minute legislation at the White House while it happened.
John Quincy Adams also skipped Andrew Jackson’s inauguration in 1829. The two had had a bitter presidential election contest, and Adams also refused to invite Jackson to the White House before the inauguration. Earlier, his father, John Adams had also refused to attend Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, due to the highly contentious and acrimonious campaign between the two. The transfer of power that year was also the first time the presidency was handed over to a person from an opposing political party.
While some of the presidents who refused to attend the inauguration ceremonies for their successors did so for what appear to be spiteful reasons, Trump is in a class of his own, as his actions between losing the election and Biden’s inauguration resulted in a mob of his loyalists storming the Capitol in an attempt to interfere with the results of the election and the traditional peaceful transfer of power.
Trump is the first president to avoid his successor’s inauguration “after trying to foment a coup so he could stay in power despite losing his reelection campaign,” Salon’s Matthew Rozsa recently pointed out.
Trump’s encouragement of his supporters to take action against Congress on the day of the Electoral College certification vote has led to heightened security in Washington, D.C. Federal authorities aren’t taking any chances, and are now vetting the backgrounds of more than 25,000 National Guard troops attending the event as part of the security detail.
On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that at least two members of the National Guard had been removed from the security mission due to harboring far-right views and having ties to fringe militia groups.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.