Nancy Pelosi is skipping Trump’s inauguration

WASHINGTON — Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House who retired from her leadership position two years ago, will skip President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, a spokesperson said, extending a long-running feud between Trump and one of his chief antagonists from his first term.

The spokesperson did not specify why Pelosi would not attend, but the former speaker has made no secret of her disdain for Trump, calling him unfit for office and a “stain on our country.” She led a chamber that impeached him twice, and she memorably ripped up a copy of one of his State of the Union addresses while standing behind him on national television.

Pelosi, 84, is still recovering from a hip replacement after falling while on an official trip to Luxembourg, but she has been attending votes in the House and the injury has not kept her away from other parts of her job.

As the leader of the Democratic minority at the time, she attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, wearing a button protesting Trump’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But as a retired leader, she has more flexibility to skip Washington ceremonies and make a statement with her absence. She also skipped an address by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to a joint session of Congress last year.

Pelosi frequently sparred verbally with Trump from the minority, and from nearly the moment Democrats took back the House majority in 2019, Pelosi and the president clashed in weighty political struggles over government funding and his first impeachment. Their in-person meetings also featured fireworks, including when Trump refused to shake hands with Pelosi at his 2020 State of the Union address and then she tore up his speech.

The animosity between the two leaders reached a fever pitch on Jan. 6, 2021, as a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, and a rioter vandalized Pelosi’s office and posed for a photo with a boot on her desk. Days later, Pelosi moved to impeach Trump a second time. After an intruder invaded Pelosi’s San Francisco home and attacked her husband, Paul, Trump amplified a baseless conspiracy theory that the attack was not genuine.

“What was sad about it, too, for my children, my grandchildren, my husband and for me was that President Trump thought it was funny,” Pelosi said in an interview with The New York Times in November. “He made a joke of it.”