TOI correspondent Washington: India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar will join an elite group of mostly right-wing foreign leaders who will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th US President in a convention-busting event on January 20.
Like China’s President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Modi is deputing his leading languages on the location situation, behooving the traditional non-partisan judgment both countries exercise. However, officials of a number of other nations, who share Trump’s ideological bent, are also making a run to Washington DC to celebrate the fall of the right.
Among them: Italy’s Georgia Meloni, Argentina’s Javier Mellei, and Hungary’s Victor Orban. Trump has even invited intellectual ally savants from Brazil, who like him was ousted after a long term in power and claimed the votes were a fraud.
There is no record of any foreign leaders officially attending a US Presidential commencement in 248 years, which is normally a totally domestic affair.
In fact, the service is so secretive that the State Department, the agency’s lead agency for foreign relations, sent a letter to diplomats ahead of the 2009 Obama opening saying” As in the history, foreign delegations will not be invited to Washington for this occasion,” after polite inquiries about a desk at the groundbreaking function that saw the US elect the first black man to the White House.
Trump is going to toss this aside in a celebration of the right, even though there will be some unusual guests, as with many other conventions he has torpedoed. Among them, El Salvador’s outlier president Nayib Bukele and Israeli settlement leaders.
Although Netanyahu’s presence is in doubt after Trump threw a social media grenade over the weekend by sharing a post with Jeffrey Sachs, a top Israeli diplomat, who has been dragging the US into endless wars in the Middle East.
This will be a first-ever inauguration, according to presidential historians already making notes. In honor of President Jimmy Carter’s passing, the event will feature US flags flying in half-mast at the ceremony, making Trump the second US president in history to serve non-consecutive terms.
Although the US flag code mandates that current and former presidents hold half-staff for a 30-day period, Trump and his supporters have expressed concern over what they perceive to be a petty action by the incoming Biden administration. At Nixon’s second inauguration, which followed his death in the wake of President Truman’s passing, the flags were in half-mast.
Trump is personally interested in the flag debate. The Democrats are all “giddy” about the possibility of our magnificent American flag going “half mast” during my inauguration. They think it’s so great, and are so happy about it because, in actuality, they don’t love our Country, they only think about themselves. Look at what they have done to our once-great America over the past four years.” It’s a total mess. he complained last week.
No American can be happy about this, and no one wants to see it. Let’s see how it plays out. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”! He continued, in an indication that he will restore the flag once he is sworn in because the flag code is customary and not legal.
Foreign visitors, however, will be more concerned with the weather than the flag. Although the oath of office is always taken at noon, January 20 is typically wintry and cold. According to legend, William Harrison, the first US president to pass away while in office, passed away on pneumonia one month after the ceremony’s opening address, where he rode an open horse carriage without a hat or overcoat, to parties and gatherings in wet attire.
Current weather forecast for January 20, 2025 shows a maximum temperature of 35F (2C ) and a minimum of 19F (-7C).
