President Joe Biden will attend the inauguration of the next U.S. president in January regardless of who wins next Tuesday’s election, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday, vowing a peaceful transfer of power.
“This president believes in the peaceful transfer of power, and that’s what you’re going to see this president do,” Jean-Pierre said. “It’s not about him. It’s about the American people. That’s what the American people need to see regardless of who wins.”
“He certainly is going to partake in that,” she said, noting that outgoing presidents regularly attended the inauguration of their successors.
She made no mention of Republican former President Donald Trump’s decision to not attend Biden’s own inauguration in January 2021.
Trump and his wife Melania left the White House before Biden’s inauguration, skipping the traditional greeting of the presidential residence’s next occupants and the inauguration itself.
Trump’s Vice President Mike Pence, whom some of Trump’s supporters had threatened to hang during the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, and his wife Karen did attend the ceremony.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Doina Chiacu)
