ATLANTA (AP) – Former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter will not attend the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. It is the first time that the 96- and 93-year-old couple will miss the ceremonies since Carter took office as 39th president in 1977.
A spokeswoman for The Carter Center in Atlanta said the Carters sent Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris their “best wishes” and “await a successful administration”.
Biden was a young Delaware senator and Carter’s ally during the Georgian term in the White House.
The Carters passed the coronavirus pandemic mainly at their home in Plains, Georgia, where they were both raised and where they returned after leaving the White House in 1981.
Carter, a Democrat, became the longest-lived American president in March 2019, overtaking former President George HW Bush, who died the previous November. Carter survived a diagnosis of melanoma that spread to his brain in 2015. Since then, he has had several falls and hip replacement surgeries. He no longer teaches at Sunday School at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, as he did for decades, but he still participates in the church’s activities through video amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carter was the first ex-president to confirm his plans to attend President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The Carters were sitting in the hall, alongside ex-President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, and ex-President George W. Bush and Laura Bush. The older Bush was the only former president at the time who did not attend Trump’s inauguration. The Carters traveled to Washington for the elder Bush’s funeral.