It is hard to find anything funny about the grotesque inauguration spectacle taking place at the Capitol on Monday (which will be Naug-Free at your Wonkette). But we suppose all the tough manly MAGA folk not being able to handle cold weather is kind of funny.
It was announced on Friday that due to extremely frigid temperatures forecast for the DC area, the inauguration will take place indoors, in the Capitol rotunda. We hope Trump’s fans treat the building better than they did the last time they were there on a frigid January day, when they were waving Confederate flags and screaming about hanging legislators and smearing shit on the walls.
Just how cold is it going to be on Monday? According to CNN, the temperature will be in the low 20s at noon, when Trump is sworn in. There will be wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour, and wind chill will be around 10 degrees.
We’re pretty sure this sort of day is considered balmy in Greenland. How are these weenies going to invade and conquer that place if they can’t stand to be outside in some mild subfreezing temperatures? We’re pretty sure by Tuesday the Trump administration will have decided that they were wrong about Greenland, and it is the Seychelles that have vast oil and mineral deposits to be stolen.
It has been this cold for Inauguration Day before. In 1961, John F. Kennedy took the oath of office and gave a great speech (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”) in 22-degree weather with eight inches of freshly fallen snow on the ground. And he gave that speech not only in freezing cold weather, but also while suffering almost constant pain from back injuries suffered during World War II and probably also syphilis. Additionally, he was distracted checking out every hot babe in the audience, though he was unable to give each of them that famous lascivious Kennedy wink due to his eyelids being frozen.
Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009 was only slightly warmer, at 28 degrees with wind chill in the mid-teens. Who can forget the image of his adorable daughters standing stoically in the cold while praying that neither of their parents would embarrass them? Of course, they were all from Chicago, where 28 degrees is a beach day.
Liberals of a certain bent who attended Obama’s first inauguration still speak in awed tones about how they didn’t mind the cold that day because they were so filled with the joy of Hope and Change. Little did anyone know that the Republicans were going right from the inauguration to a pricey DC steakhouse, where they made a blood pact to be completely obstructionist dickheads for the next four years and drive the nation to a nervous breakdown.
That was also the day when Obama drew a crowd far larger than the one Trump would draw eight years later, which led to Sean Spicer’s humiliating himself in front of the press corps on the first day of the new administration and never really recovering whatever goodwill the White House press corps might in its sycophancy have been willing to grant him to start his new job. Trump still seethes about it.
Has an inauguration ever been moved inside because of weather before? You bet! A blizzard in 1909 forced William Howard Taft’s inauguration indoors. And brutally cold weather on Inauguration Day in 1985 — it was 7 degrees outside — meant Ronald Reagan took the oath of office inside, once people reminded him that he had just been re-elected President.
Now that we think about it, there are quite a few parallels between the second inaugurations for Trump and Reagan:
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Reagan, we now know, was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s at his second swearing-in. Trump often gives the impression of either having dementia or being so galactically dumb and incoherent that people think he does.
Of course, we would be remiss if we ignored the inauguration of William Henry Harrison. We do not know how cold it was on March 4, 1841 — temperatures could not be measured because science had not yet been invented. But we know that Harrison did not wear a hat or a coat while riding a horse to the ceremony, where he gave a two-hour speech. It was the longest inaugural speech in history.
Three weeks later, worn out from the demands of both the inauguration and an unending string of his fellow Whigs coming to the White House to demand jobs and influence, Harrison went for a walk, got caught in a rainstorm, came down with pneumonia, and died. It was very sad for the nation, but 152 years later, The Simpsons did get a pretty funny song referencing it.
Harrison’s was the shortest presidency in history. Donald Trump’s only feels like the longest.
By the way, the cold on Monday is caused by a polar vortex descending from the Arctic. There was a time when the jet stream would have prevented polar air from moving so far south. But thanks to climate change, the jet stream has become weaker, and polar air will occasionally leak towards the equator. That this phenomenon is forcing the inauguration of a climate change denier inside is yet more evidence that our planet has an amazing sense of irony.
[CNN]
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