This is just now hitting the wire services President Trump’s Twitter timeline:

To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2021

This makes President Trump one of three presidents to refuse to celebrate the inauguration of their successor. : John Adams in 1801 because Thomas Jefferson was the devil; John Quincy Adams in 1829 because Andrew Jackson was the devil; and Andrew Johnson in 1869 because Ulysses Grant was the devil. You see a pattern developing.

I don’t think this is a huge shock. If President Trump had attended the inauguration, he would have been saying, in essence, that his objections to the 2020 election were just a game he was playing to con his supporters. If he had any manhood at all, he couldn’t socialize with a moral degenerate like Joe Biden and retain any sense of dignity (looking at Mike Pence and George W. Bush right now).

While Biden, himself, claims he doesn’t care, he believes Trump should be with him for the official Macarena danced on the US Constitution for the good of the country.

Biden has previously said that while he does not personally care whether Trump attends his inauguration, the outgoing president should show up for the sake of the nation and its image on the world stage.

Trump’s presence is “important in a sense that we are able to demonstrate, at the end of this chaos that he’s created, that there is a peaceful transfer of power — with competing parties standing there, shaking hands and moving on,” Biden told CNN in an interview last month.

“The protocol of the transfer of power, I think, is important,” Biden said. “But it is totally his decision, and it’s of no personal consequence to me. But I do think it is for the country.”

I think the reason Biden wants him there is more personal. He, unlike the media, is under no misapprehension about how he won. He needs Trump there to validate his victory and keep his voters in line. Neither of those things is likely to happen.