Kenya Insights

Tag: inauguration

  • Michelle Obama To Skip Trump’s Inauguration

    Michelle Obama To Skip Trump’s Inauguration

    Former first lady Michelle Obama will not attend Donald Trump’s inauguration next week, her office said Tuesday, 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 color 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.

    (CNN)

  • Trump Invites China’s Xi Jinping To Attend His inauguration

    Trump Invites China’s Xi Jinping To Attend His inauguration

    US President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly invited his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to participate in his presidential inauguration next month.

    Sources revealed that Trump extended the invitation to Xi in early November, shortly after the election, but it remains unclear whether the Chinese president has accepted, CBS News reported late Wednesday.

    The report said that officials are making plans for more foreign dignitaries to attend the swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20.

    According to Trump’s team, there are more leaders who may attend the presidential inauguration.

    “World leaders are lining up to meet with President Trump because they know he will soon return to power and restore peace through American strength around the globe,” Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, according to CBS News.

    Trump said in an interview with NBC News conducted on Friday that he “got along with very well” with Xi and that they had “had communication as recently as this week.”

    It would be unprecedented for a leader of China, a top U.S. geopolitical rival, to attend a U.S. presidential inauguration.

    Trump has named numerous China hawks to key posts in his incoming administration, including Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state.

    The report of the invitation came days after Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods.

    The president-elect has said he will impose an additional 10% tariff on Chinese goods unless Beijing does more to stop trafficking of the highly addictive narcotic fentanyl. He also threatened tariffs in excess of 60% on Chinese goods while on the campaign trail.

    In late November, China’s state media warned Trump that his pledge to slap additional tariffs on Chinese goods over fentanyl flows could drag the world’s top two economies into a mutually destructive tariff war.

    The invitation also comes at a time when the US set a Jan. 19 deadline, the day before the inauguration, for ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to sell the social media app or face a ban in the country.