President Donald Trump announced Friday that he would not attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, who will be sworn into office in less than two weeks. Returning from his 12-hour Twitter ban instituted because of his inciting statements made about the Capitol Hill riots, Trump tweeted, “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Trump won’t be the first outgoing president to skip their successor’s inauguration. According to the White House Historical Association, presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson all did not attend the inauguration of their successor. Trump has repeatedly insisted that he actually won the November presidential election, despite having no evidence to his voter fraud claims, struck down in court dozens of times.
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Despite declaring he would “never concede,” Trump’s decision not to attend Biden’s inauguration came a day after he acknowledged that “a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th” in a video shared to Twitter amid the Capitol Hill chaos. “My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power,” he said in his address to the nation following the riot that left five people, including a U.S. Capitol Police officer, dead. “Now tempers must be cooled, and calm restored. We must get on with the business of America.” While Trump didn’t go as far as condemning the riot, he said, “To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.”
Trump’s Twitter suspension came just before Facebook announced Thursday that the president was banned from his account “indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks” through the end of his presidency due to attempts to “undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power” and “provoke further violence.”
“Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a statement. “But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.”
He continued, “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”
