By THOMAS BEAUMONT | Related Press
Ronald and Nancy Reagan have been dissatisfied.
That’s what White Home press secretary Larry Speakes informed reporters on Jan. 18, 1985, after the Republican president and first woman determined to carry his second inauguration indoors due to an unusually chilly climate forecast.
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“They really felt they had no choice,” Speakes stated two days earlier than the ceremony, in accordance with archived transcripts of press briefings housed on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California.
President-elect Donald Trump’s determination to take the oath of workplace within the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, when below-freezing temperatures are once more anticipated, recollects the final time chilly climate prompted an analogous determination.
The transcripts from 1985 make clear the Reagans’ issues.
“There was high-level medical and military consultation and it was just a very serious problem for health and safety,” Speakes stated, in accordance with transcripts supplied Friday by the Reagan library. “We would have had probably some very serious problems for some of the participants.”
Like what, reporters requested.
For a day when the temperature reached 7 levels Fahrenheit (-14 Celsius) in Washington, “the medical people told them that exposed areas would freeze in less than five minutes, with wind-chill factors like this,” Speakes stated.
Speakes waved off considerations for Reagan’s personal well being as a person taking workplace a second time at almost 74 years outdated. (Trump turned 78 in June and can turn into the oldest individual to start out a presidential time period. President Joe Biden, who can be within the viewers whereas Trump takes the oath of workplace, is 82.)
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Reagan’s field on the west steps of the Capitol would have been heated, so “no, I don’t think that was ever voiced to the president,” Speakes stated.
It was the 1000’s of individuals collaborating within the parade, standing alongside the parade route and huddled on the Nationwide Mall who, Speakes stated, involved the president and first woman extra.
“The Reagans looked at it … knowing parade participants might be out there for four hours, if not longer,” he stated. “So, it was just obvious, knowing that — what the medical people told them — that they would have had severe frostbite, if not some conditions that could have been worse.”
Initially Printed: January 18, 2025 at 4:01 PM PST
