Biden's inauguration festivities will be 80 percent virtual, Clyburn says

Brendan Morrow

President-elect Joe Biden won't exactly be getting sworn in over Zoom this January, but certainly don't expect his inauguration to look like usual.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), co-chair of Biden's inaugural committee, told MSNBC on Tuesday that the festivities for the upcoming inauguration will be largely virtual amid the COVID-19 pandemic, similar to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

"We will be setting an example with this inauguration," Clyburn said. "It is going to be what we might call a hybrid. He'll take the oath in the traditional way, but all of the inaugural festivities are going to be 80 percent what we would call virtual."

Biden's inauguration will be taking place in January right around the time when health experts have warned of a potential new surge in COVID-19 cases due to holiday gatherings, with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, predicting the middle of January could "be a really dark time for us."

Previously, Biden said that "my guess is that there probably will not be a gigantic inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue" for his inauguration, but "you'll see a lot of virtual activity in states all across America, engaging even more people than before," Politico reports.

Clyburn explained to MSNBC on Tuesday that while the plan is for Biden to take the oath of office in a "traditional fashion," the "luncheon afterwards probably won't take place," and the "festivities of the evening will probably be dispersed out among the 50 states." The 2020 Democratic National Convention previously took place mostly virtually in August, and Clyburn told MSNBC, "I thought the convention went extremely well, and that's what we're going to do here, run this pretty much like we did our national convention."

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