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Former first lady Michelle Obama will skip the inauguration of the newly elected president Donald Trumpthe second time in two weeks to not attend a gathering of former US leaders and their spouses.
Former presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clintonand George W Bush will be there.
Laura Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will to join their husbands at the Jan. 20 swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol, said representatives.
“Former President Barack Obama has been confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremony. Former first lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration,” the statement from the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama reads.
No explanation was given as to why Michelle Obama skipped Trump’s inauguration. She was the only wife of the former president absent from Jimmy Carter’s funeral last week at the Washington National Cathedral, due to a longer stay in Hawaii. Her husband and Trump, joined by Melania, sat side by side in her absence, chatting and laughing like old friends despite their history of political animosity.
Former presidents Bush and Clinton and their spouses attended the ceremony.
Trump admitted that he was surprised by “how friendly” his conversation with Obama seemed.
“I must say it looked very friendly. I didn’t realize how friendly he looked. I saw it on your wonderful network just before I came in,” Trump told a reporter. “And I said, ‘Man, they look like two people who like each other.'”
“We probably know [like each other]”, Trump added, alleging The Daily Beast. “We have slightly different philosophies, don’t we? But we probably have, I don’t know. We just got along. But I got along with almost everyone.”
“We met backstage, as you know, before we moved on,” said the president-elect. “I thought it was a beautiful service. But we all got on well, which is good.”
All three former presidents and their wives attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, including Hillary Clinton, after she lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump. Carter also attended.
Trump is known to have not attended the 2021 inauguration of President Joe Biden following the riots at the Capitol on January 6 and his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Michelle Obama has attended every inauguration since 2009, including Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.
In 2023, she spoke on her podcast The Light Postcast about what it was like to sit in the audience as Trump was sworn in as president.
“To sit on that stage and see the opposite of what we were presenting at the show, there was no diversity, there was no color on that stage,” she said.
“There was no reflection of the broader sense of America. A lot of people took pictures of me and you didn’t seem to be in a good mood. No, I didn’t,” she added.
Obama went on to say that she cried for half an hour after the ceremony “because we held her so much for eight years without being able to show everything.”
Additional reporting by AP