By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Donald Trump is expected to arrive in Washington on Saturday evening for an inauguration ceremony that marks his return to power boosted by cold temperatures.
Trump will stay in the area with his wife Melania in the evening from his home base in Palm Beach, Florida, where the Republican had worked on his transition to control after winning the November 5 election by Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump is expected to go immediately to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, outside Washington, where a crowd of about 500 guests will watch a fireworks display and a musical performance including Leo Days, an Elvis impersonator, and Christopher Macchio, a tenor. that Mr. Trump has shown him at political events.
The 78-year-old Trump is expected to hold a rally with supporters inside Capital One (NYSE:) Arena in downtown Washington on Sunday, the night of his inauguration, and a post-inauguration ceremony on Monday afternoon. Trump will be sworn in at 12 pm ET.
A flurry of freezing weather on Monday caused Trump to move the inauguration ceremonies from the iconic west side of the US Capitol building to inside the Capitol Rotunda, and the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capital One Arena.
Many of the more than 220,000 ticketed visitors expected to watch from the grounds of the US Capitol will not be able to watch the swearing-in inside the building. Only a fraction will be able to get inside the 20,000 seats of the Capital One Arena where the US Inauguration will be broadcast and entertain people and participants are expected to play.
Trump will deliver his inaugural address, a speech designed to set the tone for the president's new four-year term, from the rotunda inside the US Capitol.
It will be the first time since Ronald Reagan's second inauguration in January 1985 that a major event has been moved indoors.
Once he returns to the White House on Monday afternoon, Trump is expected to begin signing some of the executive orders and orders he plans to end immigration, boost US energy production and other priorities.
Trump, whose first term was 2017-2021, 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 come back another way.”
Two weeks earlier, his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, seeking to delay lawmakers from confirming Biden's victory.