President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural lunch will be missing three prominent faces, with former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all reportedly declining to attend.
Obama received Trump’s invitation but has declined to attend. Clinton said he does not plan to attend and Bush’s office said it was not tracking an invitation for him to the event, according to sources speaking with NBC News.
The traditional lunch is scheduled to take place following Monday’s swearing-in ceremony, which all three former presidents have said they will attend.
Former Secretary of State and first lady Hillary Clinton, who attended Trump’s inaugural lunch after losing to him in the 2016 election, was also invited to the lunch but will not attend this year’s, NBC also reported.
Former first lady Michelle Obama has also said that she will skip the entire day’s events. Though no reason was given, several outlets have pointed to Trump’s years-long personal attacks on her and her family, and her fierce criticism of him while campaigning against his reelection.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will also entirely skip Trump’s inauguration, a spokesperson for her office told HuffPost.
Representatives for all three former presidents, none of whom endorsed Trump’s reelection, did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment Thursday.
Though Trump has long been known for making public, personal attacks and criticisms of others, cordiality between Trump and his predecessors has vastly soured in the years since he first took office.
During Trump’s 2017 luncheon, he called for a standing ovation for his former rival, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, saying he was very honored when he heard that they would be attending the event.
“I have a lot of respect for those two people,” he said, before going on to forecast four years of “peace and prosperity” under his administration. He reportedly tried to prosecute Hillary Clinton once in office, according to a 2018 report by The New York Times.
The Countdown To Trump Is On
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.
After losing his 2020 reelection, Trump and his wife Melania Trump notably did not attend any of Joe Biden’s inauguration events, including Biden’s swearing-in ceremony.
That event went on despite Trump loyalists days earlier storming the U.S. Capitol amid Trump’s ongoing insistence that the election was stolen from him.
Inaugural luncheons have been held at the U.S. Capitol for the new president, vice president and guests since 1953, according to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC), which oversees all inaugural events.