Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., said Thursday she will boycott President-elect Trump’s inauguration and will be organizing and preparing to resist Trump instead.
The California Democrat said Inauguration Day should be a time of celebration, but noted that she had no intention of honoring an incoming president who she said “rode racism, sexism, xenophobia and bigotry to the White House.”
“Donald Trump ran one of the most divisive and prejudiced campaigns in modern history,” Lee said Thursday. “He began his campaign by insulting Mexican immigrants, pledging to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, and then spent a year and a half denigrating communities of color and normalizing bigotry.
“Donald Trump has proven that his administration will normalize the most extreme fringes of the Republican Party. On Inauguration Day, I will not be celebrating, I will be organizing and preparing for resistance.”
Lee isn’t the only Democrat in Congress who has made plans to skip the inauguration. Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon also plan to skip the swearing-in.
