Afraid of a little cold weather, Donald Trump will break with years of tradition to move his inauguration ceremony indoors. He will deliver his address inside the U.S. Capitol Rotunda before joining supporters at the nearby Capital One Arena.
“There is an Arctic blast sweeping the Country. I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way. It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th (In any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly!),” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Apparently, now he cares about the safety of law enforcement at the Capitol, unlike four years ago, when he allowed those law enforcement officers to be brutally beaten by his supporters who were, at his behest, trying to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Trump’s swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for 12 PM ET on Monday, when the temperature in Washington, D.C., is expected to be 22 degrees, according to the National Weather Service, with the wind chill around 8 degrees. That puts it close to the 28 degree temperature and mid-teens wind chill during Barack Obama’s first inauguration, in 2009, according to historical data from the National Weather Service. And Obama didn’t chicken out and move the ceremony inside.
The sun rises behind the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 12, 2025, as a now-moot rehearsal of Donald Trump’s upcoming inauguration begins.
Trump continued, “This will be a very beautiful experience for all, and especially for the large TV audience!”
What’s more, in 1961 when John F. Kennedy was sworn in, it snowed 8 inches and was also 22 degrees at 12 PM ET. Yet JFK still held his inauguration outside, with nearly 1 million people braving those sub-freezing temperatures to watch his swearing-in.
In fact, the last time an inauguration was held indoors was 1985, when the National Weather Service says temperatures in the District of Columbia were 7 degrees, with the wind child going as low as 20 below zero—far colder than what’s expected on Trump’s Inauguration Day.
Holding the event indoors will make it so that Trump won’t get to look out at a crowd of supporters as he delivers his inaugural address, which will probably be insanely dark and xenophobic.
But maybe Trump prefers an indoor ceremony. After all, he can use it and the temperature as an excuse for why a paltry number of supporters show up.
Trump is infamously obsessed with crowd sizes. He often lies about the number of people who attend his campaign rallies to say that more people showed up than actually did. And no one can forget the rage he felt when his 2017 inaugural crowd was significantly smaller than Obama’s in 2009. He was so mad he forced the National Park Service to provide images that made his crowd look as big as the ones Obama had.
Ultimately, moving the inauguration inside is a real chicken move. Who’s the tough guy now, Donny?
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