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Former First Lady Michelle Obama will skip the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, the second time in two weeks that she is not attending a gathering of former U.S. leaders and their spouses.
Former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush will be there.
Laura Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will join their husbands for the January 20 swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol, representatives said.
“Former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies. Former first lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration,” said a statement from the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama.
No explanation was given for why Michelle Obama was skipping Trump’s inauguration. She was the only spouse absent from Jimmy Carter’s funeral last week at Washington National Cathedral, where her husband and Trump were seated next to each other and chatted and laughed like old friends despite the history of political animosity between the Democratic former president and the returning Republican.
Former presidents Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton and their spouses attended the ceremony.
Trump admitted that he was surprised at “how friendly” his conversation with Obama looked.
“It did look very friendly, I must say. I didn’t realize how friendly it looked. I saw it on your wonderful network just a little while ago before I came in,” Trump told a reporter. “And I said, ‘Boy, they look like two people who like each other.’”
Obama was spotted chuckling at something Trump said as the incoming president smiled.
“We probably do [like each other],” Trump added, according to The Daily Beast. “We have a little different philosophies, right? But we probably do, I don’t know. We just got along. But I got along with just about everybody.”
Trump and Obama sat next to each other, with the younger of the two men riding solo for the event as Michelle Obama reportedly had a scheduling conflict and was in Hawaii.
“We met backstage, as you know, before we went on,” Trump said. “I thought it was a beautiful service. But we all got along very well, which is good.”
All three former presidents and their wives attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, including Hillary Clinton, after she lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump. Carter also attended.
Trump famously didn’t attend the 2021 inauguration of President Joe Biden following the January 6 Capitol riot and Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
Michelle Obama has attended every inauguration since 2009, including Trump’s first inauguration in 2017.
In 2023, she spoke on her podcast The Light Postcast about what it was like to sit in the audience as Trump was sworn in as president.
“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,” she said.
“There was no reflection of the broader sense of America. Many people took pictures of me and they’re like, you weren’t in a good mood. No, I was not,” she added.
Obama went on to say that she cried for half an hour following the ceremony “because that’s how much we were holding it together for eight years without really being able to show it all.”
Additional reporting by AP
