By Aiyeku Timothy
President Joe Biden and his wife were momentarily locked outside the White House on Inauguration Day.
The awkward moment has been described as Donald Trump’s final “petty act”
Just as Joe Biden was inaugurated on Wednesday as the 46th president at a ceremony at the US Capitol, and as the tradition permits, the president and his wife were given military escort to their new home.
As they walked up the steps to enter the executive mansion, Biden and his wife were greeted with a flat moment with the door refusing to open.
They were filmed waiting and embracing in the cold with family members coming up behind them before the doors eventually swung open to welcome the president.
The awkward moment lasted about ten seconds, but the blunder did not go unnoticed.
The National Journal said a well-placed official not associated with the incoming Biden team alleged that “The Trumps sent the butlers home when they left so there would be no one to help the Bidens when they arrived.”
“So petty,” the official reportedly added.
The chief usher, Timothy Harleth, scheduled to welcome the Bidens to the White House had been fired by Trump about five hours earlier.
White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki confirmed at a daily press conference on Friday that the chief usher had been fired “before we walked in the door.”
In his reaction, Lea Berman, who served as a White House social secretary for President George W Bush, told The New York Times that it was a protocol breach for the front doors to be shut at the first family as they arrived at the North Portico.
Betty Monkman, who was a White House curator for 30 years and helped supervise previous changeovers reacted by stating that he was puzzled a bit when the door delayed in opening.
Kaftanpost gathers that this lockout or absence of ushers to receive the incoming President is unprecedented in US history.
Kaftanpost can also gather that Trump is the first in 152 years to skip a successors’ inauguration after the last impeached single-term president, Andrew Johnson, the nation’s 17th president, in 1869, who, after dithering for a good while, refused to come out of the White House to accompany Ulysses S. Grant to the Capitol for his inauguration.
