Written by Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Saturday evening for an inauguration ceremony marking his return to power upset by record cold temperatures.
Trump will arrive in the region with his wife, Melania, in the early evening from his base in Palm Beach, Florida, where the Republican was working on his transition to power after winning the November 5 election over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump is expected to head immediately to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, outside Washington, where a crowd of about 500 guests will watch a fireworks display and musical performances including Leo Days, an Elvis impersonator, and Christopher Macchio, a tenor singer. In which Mr. Trump has previously appeared at political events.
Trump, 78, is scheduled to hold a massive rally with his supporters inside the White House Capital One (NYSE:) arena in downtown Washington on Sunday, the eve of his inauguration, as well as a post-inauguration event on Monday afternoon. Trump will be sworn in at 12 noon ET.
Cold weather forecasts on Monday prompted Trump to move the inauguration ceremony from the iconic west facade of the U.S. Capitol to the interior of the Capitol Rotunda, and the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to Capital One Square.
Most of the more than 220,000 ticketed guests who were scheduled to watch the ceremony from the U.S. Capitol grounds will not be able to watch the swearing-in inside the building. Only a portion will be able to seat the 20,000-seat Capital One Arena where the U.S. inauguration will be broadcast and artists and participants are expected to perform.
Trump is scheduled to deliver his inaugural address, a speech usually intended to set the tone for the president's new four-year term, from the rotunda inside the US Capitol building.
This will be the first time since Ronald Reagan's second inauguration in January 1985 that the major event will be moved indoors.
Once he returns to the White House on Monday afternoon, Trump is expected to begin signing some of the dozens of executive orders and directives he has planned to crack down on immigration, boost U.S. energy production and other priorities.
Trump, whose first term was 2017-2021, had refused to attend the inauguration of the man who defeated him in 2020, Democrat Joe Biden. He left Washington for Florida before the ceremony, vowing that “we will return in some form.”
Two weeks ago, his supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to delay lawmakers from certifying Biden's victory.
