Trump Refused to Attend Biden Inauguration After Mitch McConnell Sought to Disinvite Him: Report
A new portion of Jon Karl’s explosive upcoming book reveals a new reason why Donald Trump chose to not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony: because Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted to prevent the former president from disturbing the swearing-in of his successor.
Previews of Karl’s book — Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show — have provided an abundance of shocking revelations about Trump’s attempts to hang onto power in the last days of his presidency. A newly-released segment of the book says that after Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, McConnell told aides that he wanted Congressional leaders to write a letter disinviting the outgoing president from Biden’s inauguration ceremony.
“McConnell felt he could not give Trump another opportunity to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” said Karl. “McConnell wanted to get a letter together from the top four congressional leaders informing Trump that he had been disinvited.”
According to Karl, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy opposed McConnell’s plan, “arguing it would be an important message of unity to have Trump attend the ceremony…But McConnell was determined to disinvite Trump regardless of whether McCarthy would sign the letter.”
In the end, Karl reported that McCarthy told the White House about McConnell’s intent to disinvite Trump. Before the letter could be sent, Trump sent out the last tweet he would post before he was kicked off Twitter for good.
To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20.
“Trump apparently wanted people to think it was his decision alone to become the first outgoing president after an election to fail to attend an inauguration since Andrew Johnson skipped the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant in 1869,” said Karl.
Clearly, there’s been no love lost between Trump and McConnell since then, judging by how the ex-president has been attacking the Senate minority leader lately for supporting the passage of the new $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal
