UPDATE (Jan. 16, 2025; 11:43 a.m. ET): TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook will attend Trump’s inauguration. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will skip the ceremony, her spokesperson said, without elaborating.
A familiar face will be missing from the notable public figures at President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20: former first lady Michelle Obama, whose office said on Wednesday that she will not attend the event.
“Former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies,” the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama said in a statement. “Former first lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration.”
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All other living former presidents and first ladies are expected to be at the ceremony: Joe and Jill Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and George W. and Laura Bush. Trump’s team has also invited several foreign leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and Argentinian President Javier Milei, though it’s unclear if they will attend.
Remarkably, three tech billionaires — Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos — will have prominent placement at the inauguration. Musk donated tens of millions of dollars to help get Trump elected last year and has become a close ally of the president-elect. And Zuckerberg and Bezos — former Trump foes — have sought to win over the president-elect since his election victory. The three men will be seated alongside Trump’s Cabinet picks and elected officials, NBC News reported Tuesday, citing an official involved with planning the event.
The Obamas’ statement did not give a reason for the former first lady’s absence. It will be the second time in two weeks that she sits out a high-profile public event at which Trump was present; she did not attend former President Jimmy Carter’s national funeral service last week due to what her advisers told CNN was a scheduling conflict. She would have been seated next to Trump at the funeral service. Instead, her husband sat next to the incoming president. The former first lady has made her disapproval for Trump quite clear. She delivered strident criticism against him in her speech at the Democratic National Convention last year, accusing him of peddling “ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions.” Other prominent Democrats like Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton have had harsh words for Trump. But Michelle Obama is not a politician herself and has, arguably, less of an obligation to attend such events. It’s not the first time a former first lady has skipped the inauguration of an incoming president. Melania Trump, who often bucks traditions herself, did not attend Biden’s inauguration in 2021 — and neither did then-President Donald Trump, who to this day continues to deny that he lost the 2020 election.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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