This year, Inauguration Day will be historic in more ways than one. Donald J. Trump will officially become the first US president sworn in for a second non-consecutive term since Grover Cleveland in 1893. He’ll become the first president sworn in for a second term after being impeached (twice, at that). He’ll become the first president sworn in after being convicted of a crime. And at seventy-eight, he’ll become the oldest person to assume the nation’s highest office.
But for once, Trump won’t be able to hog all the glory. Because he skipped the ceremony in 2021—making him the first president to snub his elected successor’s inauguration since Andrew Johnson in 1868 (who, as it happens, was the first president to be impeached)—Trump will be collaborating on an achievement so idiosyncratic it’s almost a brainteaser. Today, at noon, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., will become the first president to attend the inauguration of the very successor who, as predecessor, didn’t bother to show up at his.
