WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump announced Friday he will skip Joe Biden’s inauguration in a final, unrepentant act of division as his presidency imploded amid demands that he step aside for the last 12 days in office.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” the US leader said on Twitter. The statement, while not a surprise from the most divisive president in decades, drew a line through any idea that Trump might seek to spend his remaining moments in the White House helping his Democratic successor calm tensions.
Not since 1869 has an outgoing US president missed the inauguration of the incoming leader, a ceremony symbolizing the peaceful transfer of power.
Two days after Trump incited followers to storm Congress, his presidency is in freefall, with allies walking away and opponents calling for his removal.
Democrats in the House of Representatives, who already impeached Trump in a traumatic, partisan vote in 2019, said an unprecedented second impeachment of the Republican could be ready for a vote next week.
“We can act very quickly when we want to,” Representative Katherine Clark told CNN.
Whether Republican leaders of the Senate would then agree to hold a lightning fast impeachment trial before the January 20 transition is another matter. However, with calls also swirling for cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare Trump unfit for office, it’s clear that the billionaire real estate tycoon is out of friends.
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