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 the couple, aged 96 and 93, have missed the ceremonies since Carter vowed to be the 39th president in 1977.
A spokeswoman for the Atlanta Carter Center said the Carters have sent Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris their “best wishes” and “hope for a successful administration.”
Biden was a young Delaware senator and Carter’s ally during Georgia’s tenure in the White House.
The Carters have passed the coronavirus pandemic primarily to their home in Plains, Georgia, where they were both raised and returned after leaving the White House in 1981.
Carter, a Democrat, became the longest-serving U.S. president in March 2019, beating former President George HW Bush, who died the previous November. Carter survived a diagnosis of melanoma that spread to the brain in 2015. He has since undergone several fall and hip replacement surgeries. He no longer teaches at the Sunday school of Maranatha Baptist Church on the plains, as he did for decades, but still participates in church activities through a video amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Carter was the first former president to confirm his plans to attend President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. The Carters were sitting in the hallway, alongside former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, and the former president. George W. Bush and Laura Bush. Former Bush was the only former president at the time who did not attend Trump’s inauguration. The Carters traveled to Washington for the funeral of old Bush.