President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris announced their inaugural committee and launched a website in the beginning stages of what will be a different inauguration ceremony.
The Biden campaign announced on Nov. 30 that Tony Allen, former Biden speechwriter and the President of Delaware State University, will serve as the chief executive officer of the inaugural committee. Maju Varghese, a Biden campaign advisor, will serve as the executive director.
Yvanna Cancela, a Nevada state senator, and Erin Wilson, a Biden campaign staffer, will serve as deputy executive directors. Biden’s transition team also launched an inauguration website BidenInaugural.org
and a new Twitter handle.Next year’s inauguration will be unlike anything ever seen before. Typically, the demand for the event would bring thousands to the
D.C. area. However, amid the coronavirus pandemic, that Biden takes seriously, many can expect a smaller crowd, social distancing and face masks everywhere.Biden’s incoming chief of staff Ron Klain took it a step further saying the ceremony is “not going to be the same,” and added it will be similar to the Democratic National Convention, which was a virtual event.
“We ran a very effective and, I think, engaging Democratic Convention this year in August, in a way that was safe for the people to participate and watch it in a way that communicated with the American people,” Klain told Politico. “I think we’ll have some mix of those techniques, some mix of, you know, scaled-down versions of the existing traditions.”
One factor that is still unknown is whether the outgoing president Donald Trump
will be attending the event. Traditionally, the outgoing president attends the new president’s inauguration, such as when Barack and Michelle Obama attended Trump’s inauguration.However, Trump has yet to even acknowledge that Biden won the election, and according to the Daily Beast is considering holding an event the same day to announce his 2024 campaign.