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Former US first lady Michelle Obama will not attend Donald Trump’s inauguration next week, her office said, without providing an explanation for her decision.
“Former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies. Former First Lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration,” a statement from the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama said.
The decision to forgo attendance at Trump’s formal swearing-in is a break with tradition for the ceremony, in which former presidents and their wives typically participate. Former president George W. Bush and Laura Bush will attend the inauguration, his office said, and sources familiar told CNN that former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton also will be there.
Michelle Obama also was not in attendance at a memorial service last week for former president Jimmy Carter, remaining instead in Hawaii.
Former president Barack Obama attended the service at the National Cathedral in Washington, sitting next to Trump and engaging in animated conversation with him as the program was getting underway.
Other former first ladies, including Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, both attended the Carter event.
Michelle Obama has spoken openly about her animosity toward Trump, whom she has accused of putting her family’s safety in danger through his rhetoric.
In 2017, she put those personal feelings aside after Trump won his first presidential election, welcoming the incoming president and Melania Trump to the White House for tea ahead of that year’s swearing-in.
In the years afterward, she spoke about the experience of sitting onstage as Trump was inaugurated.
“There were tears, there was that emotion. But then to sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display – there was no diversity, there was no colour on that stage, there was no reflection of the broader sense of America,” she said in a podcast in 2023.
The Trumps did not attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 amid the president-elect’s false claims that he won the 2020 election.
