According to new reports, on Inauguration Day, outgoing President Donald Trump will be departing Washington, D.C., before the inauguration of his successor, President-elect Joe Biden. Previously, Trump already announced that he would not be attending Biden’s inauguration, but more details of his plans for Inauguration Day, which is this coming Wednesday, were not yet known. According to The Washington Post, Trump “will attend an unprecedented farewell event at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, where Air Force One is kept,” and early Friday, CNN’s Jim Acosta added that “Trump’s departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews on the morning of the 20th is expected to be like a state visit departure event,” according to an administration official.
Trump's departure ceremony at Joint Base Andrews on the morning of the 20th is expected to be like a state visit departure event, per admin official familiar with planning. Color guard, military band, 21 gun salute and red carpet all under consideration for event, at the moment.
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) January 15, 2021
In other words, the endlessly self-obsessed Trump is apparently planning to leave D.C. for the final time as president under the cover of yet another spectacle of his self-obsession. The last time that a U.S. president skipped the inauguration of their successor was all the way back in 1869, when then-outgoing President Andrew Johnson skipped out on the inauguration of his successor, Ulysses S. Grant. Johnson, Trump, and Bill Clinton are the only three U.S. presidents who have ever been impeached — while Trump holds the distinction of being the only U.S. president to ever get impeached twice. The House launched a second round of impeachment proceedings against Trump after last week’s deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol that he helped incite.
Apparently, Trump will be heading to Palm Beach County, Florida, on Wednesday, where his Mar-a-Lago resort is located and where he’s spent a staggering amount of time while in office. According to an NBC tracker, Trump has spent at least part of the day at Mar-a-Lago on 133 days throughout the duration of his presidency, which is over one-third of a year. Overall, he’s at least stopped by one of his properties on at least 378 days of his presidency, meaning that over a year of his time in office has directly involved his own properties.
At a recent event where he took questions from reporters, President-elect Biden called Trump’s decision to skip next week’s inauguration “a good thing,” pointedly observing that Trump’s absence is “one of the few things he and I have ever agreed on.”
