President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s inaugural address on 20 January will take place indoors due to dangerously cold weather being forecast next week in Washington, he has confirmed.<\/p>\n
The address, as well as other speeches, will now take place inside the US Capitol\u2019s rotunda, rather than outside the building.<\/p>\n
The inaugural parade will also be held indoors at Washington\u2019s Capital One Arena in downtown Washington about one mile (1.6km) away, along with all three inaugural balls.<\/p>\n
The last president to be sworn-in indoors was Ronald Reagan in 1985, when cold weather also plagued the US Capitol.<\/p>\n
In a statement posted to his Truth Social social media platform, Trump said that he does not \u201cwant to see people hurt, or injured, in any way\u201d amid the freezing temperatures.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of law enforcement, first responders, police K9s and even horses\u201d as well as \u201chundreds of thousands\u201d of supporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn any event, if you decide to come, dress warmly,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The Capital One Arena will also be open for a live viewing of the inaugural address.<\/p>\n
Trump \u2013 who has a rally planned there on Sunday \u2013 said he would visit the arena after being sworn-in at the Capitol.<\/p>\n
A planned parade will now take place in a modified form. It is unclear whether it will now take place inside.<\/p>\n
Extreme cold has been forecast in Washington DC on inauguration day, with temperatures expected to hit a low of -11C (12F) and a high of -5C (23F). With wind chill factored in, the temperature will feel significantly colder.<\/p>\n
The weather forms part of a larger polar vortex that will send temperatures plummeting across the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone will be safe, everyone will be happy, and we will, together, Make America Great Again,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the inauguration, organisers had said that about 220,000 tickets would be distributed to watch the event\u2019s on the grounds of the US Capitol.<\/p>\n
Those without tickets would also have been able to view the ceremonies on the National Mall.<\/p>\n
Alternate plans will now be required for those visitors, as well as the tens of thousands of others expected in the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people should be able to make their own decisions,\u201d one man planning to attend the inauguration told the BBC. \u201cThey should dress warmly to come out because it\u2019s a historical event and it should be outside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another supporter said of Trump: \u201cI would stand in the [cold] weather in order to support what he\u2019s going to do, what he did in the past, and what he\u2019s going to do in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump said that other inaugural events, including his rally on Sunday and three separate official inaugural balls on Monday evening, would take place as planned.<\/p>\n
The move indoors means a much more limited capacity at Monday\u2019s swearing-in for Trump, who is known to closely track attendance figures at his public events.<\/p>\n
After his first inauguration, he claimed a \u201cmillion and half people\u201d had attended on the National Mall.<\/p>\n
But crowd-size experts said the numbers were about a third of the estimated 800,000 to one million people who attended Barack Obama\u2019s one in 2009.<\/p>\n
Only about 1,000 people attended Joe Biden\u2019s inauguration on the Capitol grounds because of Covid-19 restrictions.<\/p>\n
In 1841, then-President William Henry Harrison, 68, gave the longest inauguration speech in US history in cold, wet conditions.<\/p>\n
He caught a cold and subsequently pneumonia, and died exactly one month later, making his presidency the shortest in US history.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President-elect Donald Trump\u2019s inaugural address on 20 January will take place indoors due to dangerously cold weather being forecast next week in Washington, he has confirmed. The address, as well as other speeches, will now take place inside the US Capitol\u2019s rotunda, rather than outside the building. The inaugural parade will also be held indoors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}