ATLANTA (AP) – Former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter will not attend inaugural president Joe Biden. This is the first time the couple, 96 and 93, have missed the ceremonies since Carter was sworn in as the 39th president in 1977.
A spokesman for The Carter Center in Atlanta said the Carters had sent their best wishes to Biden and under-elected Vice President Kamala Harris and were “looking forward to a successful government”.
Biden was a young Delaware senator and Carter ally during the Georgian’s term in the White House.
The Carters spent the coronavirus pandemic mostly in their home in Plains, Georgia, where both were raised and returned to after leaving the White House in 1981.
Carter, a Democrat, became the long-lived U.S. president in March 2019, surpassing former President George HW Bush, who passed away last November. Carter survived a melanoma diagnosis that spread to his brain in 2015. Since then, he has undergone several fall and hip replacement surgeries. He no longer teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, as he has for decades, but still participates in church activities amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carter was the first former president to confirm his plans to attend the inauguration of President Donald Trump in 2017. The Carters sat along the aisle, next to former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, and former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush. Elder Bush at the time was the lone former president who did not attend Trump’s inauguration. The Carters did travel to Washington for the funeral of Elder Bush.