The White House has denied reports that President Trump is planning a Florida rally potentially to announce his 2024 bid instead of attending President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
Last week, three people familiar with the matter told NBC News that “preliminary planning” was underway to hold an event during Biden’s inauguration. According to Axios, Trump is now planning to depart from the White House on Inauguration Day on his final Air Force One flight to Florida during Biden’s swearing-in.
The White House denied the reports, saying the anonymous sources used in Axios’s and NBC News’s reports “have no idea.”
“Anonymous sources who claim to know what the President is or is not considering have no idea. When President Trump has an announcement about his plans for Jan. 20 he will let you know,” White House spokesman Judd Deere told the Washington Examiner.
Trump has yet to concede or invite Biden to the White House. This has been the second-longest delay between a general election and a White House meeting between an outgoing president and his successor. Trump previously said that he would “certainly” concede if Biden won enough votes in the Electoral College — but then dug in and said that Biden “can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous 80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulent or illegally obtained.
Biden secured more than 81 million votes to Trump’s 74 million, according to the Associated Press. Biden’s popular vote total is the most votes a presidential candidate has ever received.
Trump has reportedly chosen Inauguration Day as the day to start his 2024 campaign because that’s when he announced his reelection campaign in 2017, according to NBC News.
Biden said Trump should attend his inauguration “for the country.”
“The protocol of the transfer of power, I think, is important. But it is totally his decision, and it’s — it has no personal consequence to me. But I do think it is for the country,” Biden told CNN on Thursday. “That there is peaceful transfer of power with the competing parties standing there, shaking hands, and moving on.”
It is unclear what Biden’s Inauguration Day celebration will look like this year, as the coronavirus continues to ravage the United States and overwhelm medical systems.
