Nancy Pelosi drops Trump’s inauguration

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives who retired from her leadership post two years ago, will pass the inauguration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, a spokeswoman said, widening a long-running dispute. between Mr. Trump and one of his bosses. opposition from the first term.

The spokesman did not specify why Ms. Pelosi would not attend, but the former speaker made no secret of her disdain for Mr. Trump, calling him unfit for office and a “stain on our country.” He led a room that interrupted him twice, tearing up a copy of the State of the Union address while standing behind him on national television.

Mrs Pelosi, 84, is still recovering from a hip replacement after falling during an official trip to Luxembourg, but she attended a House vote and the injury has not kept her from other areas of her work. .

As the Democratic minority leader at the time, he attended Mr. Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, wearing a button-up to protest Mr. Trump’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. financial management. But as a retired leader, he has more leeway to skip the Washington ceremony and make a statement in his absence. He also skipped Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress last year.

Ms. Pelosi has been in constant contact with Mr. Trump from the minority, and since Democrats took over the House majority in 2019, she has been embroiled in a tough political battle. Mrs. Pelosi is the first to talk about government funding and its elimination. Their private meeting has also featured fireworks, including when Mr. Trump refused to shake Ms. Pelosi’s hand at her 2020 State of the Union address and then interrupted her speech.

The dispute between the two leaders reached a fever pitch on Jan. 6, 2021, when groups of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, and rioters vandalized Ms. Pelosi’s office and posed for photos with boot on his desk. Days later, Ms. Pelosi moved to impeach Mr. Trump a second time. After intruders stormed Ms. Pelosi’s home in San Francisco and attacked her husband, Paul, Mr. Trump reinforced the baseless conspiracy theory that the attack was not real.

“The sad thing about it, too, for my kids, my grandkids, my husband and I was that they thought President Trump was funny,” Ms. Pelosi said in an interview with The New York Times in November. . “He made a joke about it.”