ATLANTA (AP) – Former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter will not attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. It is the first time the couple, 96 and 93, have missed the ceremonies since Carter was sworn in as the 39th president in 1977.
A spokeswoman for The Carter Center in Atlanta said the Carters have sent Biden and elected vice president Kamala Harris their “best wishes” and “look forward to a successful government.”
Biden was a young senator from Delaware and an ally of Carter during the Georgian in the White House.
The Carters mostly spent the coronavirus pandemic in their home in Plains, Georgia, where both grew up and returned to after leaving the White House in 1981.
Carter, a Democrat, became the surviving US president in March 2019, surpassing former President George HW Bush, who died last November. Carter survived a diagnosis of melanoma that spread to his brain in 2015. He has since undergone several falls and hip replacement surgery. He no longer teaches Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, as he had for decades, but continues to participate in church activities via video during 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 sat in the aisle next to former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, and former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush. The elder Bush was the only former president at the time who did not attend Trump’s inauguration. The Carters traveled to Washington for the elder Bush’s funeral.