On January 20, 2025, the inauguration ceremony of the President-elect and Vice President-elect of the United States Donald Trump and James David Vance will take place in Washington. This is the 60th ceremony in US history and Trump's second. He was already at the head of the country from 2017-2021. For more than two centuries, this procedure, which arose together with the institution of the presidency, has undergone many changes.
The ceremony is held in Washington on January 20 of the year following the election year.
The protocol includes several things. On the eve of their inauguration, the newly elected president and the newly elected vice president lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
On the morning of the inauguration day, the future president usually attends a church service. At around 10:00 a.m., the newly elected president and vice president arrive at the White House, where they are greeted by the incumbent president and vice president. A 15-minute tea party follows. At 10:30 a.m., they go to the Capitol (the building of the United States Congress).
The vice president-elect is sworn in at the Capitol at 11:45 a.m., and the president at noon. A 21-gun salute is fired, and the orchestra plays Hail to the Chief, the anthem of the US President. The head of state delivers a speech. The former president then leaves Washington. The official ceremony ends with a parade. In the evening there are receptions and balls, and the next day there is a "prayer breakfast."
The inauguration ceremony has been held in Washington since 1801, when the third president, Thomas Jefferson, took office. This became possible after the city, which had been under construction since 1790, was granted the status of the capital on December 1, 1800. The first US President, George Washington, was sworn in on April 30, 1789. in the Federal Hall building on Wall Street in New York City, the country's temporary capital at the time. He took office for the second time in 1793 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the capital had been moved. The second president, John Adams, was inaugurated there in 1797.
The first morning service before the ceremony was conducted by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. He visited St. John's Cathedral next to the White House. Subsequently, almost all presidents attended church services, often held in the same church. Special services were sometimes held at the White House. In 1977, before Jimmy Carter took office, a joint service of representatives of the major religions was organized in the Lincoln Memorial building.
The tradition of meetings between presidents and vice presidents and their successors in the White House began in 1837, when Andrew Jackson transferred power to Martin Van Buren. Since 1877, tea parties have been held during such meetings. The retiring head of state writes letters of gratitude to the White House staff, and also leaves a note in the Oval Office with farewell words to the new leader of the country.
The first president to be sworn in in the Capitol was Thomas Jefferson. The ceremony took place in 1801 in an unfinished building, in its north wing. In 1817, under James Monroe, the tradition of holding the inauguration outdoors was established. In 1825, John Quincy Adams performed the first ceremony on the East Portico of the Capitol. All presidents took their oaths here until 1981, when Ronald Reagan moved the inauguration to the West Terrace. In cold weather, the ceremonies are held in the Rotunda, the main hall of the Capitol, located under the central dome. Among the guests at the celebrations are former and future members of the cabinet, members of both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court (this is the only event at which they gather simultaneously in one place), as well as their accompanying people (about 1,600 people in total).
The text of the presidential oath is written in the US Constitution and consists of 35 words: “I (full name of the president) do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States".
The possibility of variations - I swear or affirm - is explained by the fact that a number of religious movements prohibit taking an oath. The words "So help me God", which all American presidents add, are not in the Constitution. They were first uttered by George Washington during his first inauguration. He also established the tradition of taking the oath by placing his hand on the Bible (only John Quincy Adams and Theodore Roosevelt took the oath on the Constitution). Presidents use their own family Bibles or those that belonged to former presidents, often two Bibles. For example, Barack Obama in 2013 He swore on the Bible of Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery, and the fighter for the rights of blacks Martin Luther King.
The vice president uses the text of the oath of allegiance to the Constitution, which is pronounced by members of the government and both houses of Congress. The oath of the second person in the state became part of the inauguration ceremonies only in 1937, before that this procedure was carried out in the Senate, whose constitutional chairman is the vice president. The oath of the vice president is administered by one of the justices of the Supreme Court, the oath of the president is administered by the chief justice of the Supreme Court (the vice president and the president repeat the text after the justices) .
If January 20 falls on a Sunday, then presidents are sworn in twice - on the day the term begins, and then during a public ceremony held the next day.
Two presidents in US history have taken the oath four times. The first is Franklin Roosevelt, who won elections four times (in 1951, the 22nd Amendment limited presidential powers to two terms). The second, thanks to a combination of circumstances, was Barack Obama. During his first inauguration in 2009, Chief Justice John Roberts, reading the text of the oath, got confused and broke the order of the words, and Obama repeated after him. The next day, Barack Obama repeated his oath of office in a private ceremony at the White House. And in 2013, when Barack Obama entered his second term, January 20 fell on a Sunday, so the president first took the oath in a small circle at the White House and repeated it the next day during a ceremony.
If the vice president becomes president after the early termination of the powers of the head of state, he also takes the oath, but there is no public inauguration ceremony. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, his vice president Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office aboard the presidential plane at Dallas Airport.
An integral part of the ceremony is the presidential inaugural address, which is considered the political declaration of the new administration. The tradition of such performances was established by George Washington in 1789. After taking the oath, he delivered a speech to members of Congress and other dignitaries. It consisted of only 135 words and became the shortest of all such speeches. The longest speech - 8,445 words - was delivered by William Henry Harrison in 1841, it lasted almost two hours (during the ceremony, the president caught a cold and died of pneumonia a month later). In all cases when, after the death of a president, his post was occupied by a vice president, neither of them delivered a speech.
Inaugural speeches are prepared by secretaries and aides, with the only exceptions being Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.
After the inaugural speech of the new head of state, the president, whose term has ended, leaves Washington. If weather permits, he goes from the Capitol by helicopter to Andrews Air Force Base (an airfield in Camp Springs, Maryland, 15 miles southeast of Washington), and from there to a new place of residence. And the new president, after saying goodbye to his predecessor, returns to the Capitol, where an inaugural dinner is held, a tradition begun in 1953 by Dwight Eisenhower (previously, a dinner in honor of the new president was given at the White House by the former president and former first lady; the last dinner in the White House was organized by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1945).
After lunch, the president and vice president return from the Capitol to the White House, where the president hosts a festive parade. The parade was first included in the inaugural program by James Madison in 1809 and has remained an integral part of it since then. It starts at the Capitol, moves along Pennsylvania Avenue and passes in front of the White House (length of the route - 2.7 km). Usually about 15,000 people participate in it - orchestras, units of all branches of the armed forces, representatives of states and major cities.
The day ends with balls. The first inaugural ball was hosted by George Washington. It was held in the New York City Hall. The first ball in Washington was held in 1809 - it was organized in honor of James Madison by his wife Dolley. In the 1930s and 1940s - the years of the Great Depression and World War II - balls were not held. The tradition was revived in 1949 by Harry Truman. Then several balls began to be held in the capital at once, and the president and first lady must attend each of them. Dwight Eisenhower organized two balls, John Kennedy - five, Ronald Reagan - 10, Bill Clinton - 14, Barack Obama held 10 balls in 2009 and 2 in 2013, Donald Trump held three balls in 2017. Joe Biden's inaugural balls were not held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The inaugural gowns of the first ladies are being moved to the Smithsonian's Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., and are on display in a permanent exhibit dedicated to the wives of American presidents.
The inaugural events conclude on January 21 with a "prayer breakfast" at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul (the main cathedral of the Episcopal Church in the United States; located in Washington, D.C.), which is held with the aim of uniting people of different nationalities, religions, and political views in prayer. The first prayer groups of representatives of different religions began to gather in 1790 by George Washington. In 1953, Dwight Eisenhower made prayer breakfasts a national event. Since then, they have been attended by all American presidents without exception. Up to 4 thousand guests from more than 100 countries are invited to the breakfast. Typically, these are parliamentarians, religious figures, representatives of government agencies, public organizations and business communities, artists.
In 1968, during the inauguration of Richard Nixon, activists of the Mobe movement, who advocated the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, threw bottles, food and smoke bombs at the presidential motorcade. During Nixon's second inauguration in 1973, about 100 thousand people took to the protest march.
In 2000, when Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore with fewer popular votes but more electoral votes, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the election results and bombarded the president's motorcade with eggs. During Bush's second inauguration in 2005 demonstrators raised anti-war slogans against the Iraq campaign.
In 2017, during the inauguration of Donald Trump, mass rallies were held in a number of cities across the country under the slogan “Trump is not our president“. In Washington, the protests turned into riots. Police used stun grenades and tear gas against protesters.
In 2021, when Joe Biden took office, increased security measures were taken across the country due to fears of mass unrest (Donald Trump, who lost the election, refused to recognize the results of the vote, and a rally by his supporters on January 6 turned into a takeover of the Capitol). However, on inauguration day, there were protests and clashes with law enforcement in a number of cities. Donald Trump boycotted Biden's inauguration ceremony (for the first time since 1869).
Foreign delegations are not usually invited to the celebrations, as the inauguration of the president-elect in the United States is considered a domestic political event (the states are usually represented by diplomats accredited to Washington).
However, Donald Trump's second inauguration may become unprecedented in US history, as, as reported by American media, in violation of tradition, he invited a number of foreign leaders and politicians from various levels to the event. Thus, some media outlets claim that the invitation was received by Chinese President Xi Jinping (the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Chinese Vice President Han Zheng would go instead of him), Argentine President Javier Migli, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, Paraguayan President Santiago Peña. A number of European right-wing politicians are also expected to participate - the co-chair of the far-right Alternative for Germany party Alice Weidel (her colleague Tino Hrupala may come instead of her), the leader of the French far-right party "Reconquista" Eric Zemmour, the leader of the British party Reform UK Nigel Farage, and others. The inauguration is said to be attended by the world's richest people, tech moguls Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Special seats have been set aside for former presidents, members of the Trump family and future ministers. Outgoing President Joe Biden will attend the inauguration ceremony of his successor.
For the first time since 1985, the ceremony will be held in the Capitol Rotunda, rather than near the building, as usual.