(Adnkronos) – After the news that Michelle Obama will snub Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony comes the news that husband Barack and other former presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, will not attend the lunch traditionally held in Congress after the new president is sworn in. The Congressional Inauguration Committee has been organizing the luncheon to celebrate the president and vice president since 1953, after the swearing-in ceremony on the Capitol steps, with select guests in attendance. Usually there are speeches and toasts to the new administration.
The three former presidents have confirmed their attendance at the swearing-in ceremony, and former first ladies Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton will also be there, along with outgoing president Joe Biden and wife Jill. It should be remembered that Donald Trump in January 2021 did not attend Biden’s inauguration ceremony, whose election he contested. But the former presidents’ choice not to attend the luncheon is a clear political signal to the Republican president, whom Bush did not endorse and against whom Obama and Clinton actively campaigned.
As for Michelle Obama, no official reason was given for the former first lady’s absence, who already last week also missed Jimmy Carter’s funeral, during which her husband was immortalized in a viral video chatting and laughing with the president-elect, whom the Democrat has repeatedly referred to as a threat to democracy.
According to CNN, the former first lady was in Hawaii for “an extended vacation,” but many recalled the harsh criticism leveled at the tycoon by the Democrat, whom many in the months of uncertainty before Joe Biden’s withdrawal in favor of Kamala Harris pointed to as the only hope of victory for the Dems. In her speech at the summer convention that crowned Harris as the nominee, who was later defeated in November, Michelle recalled that Trump had led conspiracy movements against her husband’s presidency, falsely accusing him of not being a legitimate president because he was not born in the United States.
“For years, Donald Trump has done everything in his power to make people afraid of us,” she said. “His limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by two hardworking, educated, successful people who were African American.” Despite this, in 2017, when the Obamas left the White House to Donald and Melania Trump, the then-first lady attended the tycoon’s swearing-in.
In a 2023 podcast, she later recounted how badly she took that experience: “There was no diversity, no color on that stage,” she recalled, referring to the fact that the audience was predominantly white. “There was no reflection of a broader idea of America.”
