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| - As votes started to show Donald Trump's win over Kamala Harris on Nov. 6, 2024, a rumor spread on social media that the vice president announced she will not attend his presidential inauguration ceremony.
One X post (archived), which had amassed more than 3.9 million views as of this writing, read: "Kamala Harris has announced she won't be showing up for the presidential induction ceremony."
(X user @DestUTD)
Some people appeared to believe the rumor. One X user commented: "I can feel her pain," while another added: "She has to heal you know..."
The X post, which was the earliest example of the claim, was posted shortly after 3 a.m. (ET) on Nov. 6 — at which point Harris had not made any public statements about the outcome of the election, including how she would (or wouldn't) react to Trump's inauguration.
The vice president's first public remarks came during a concession speech at Howard University in Washington, D.C., later that day. Harris did not mention plans to avoid Trump's inauguration ceremony during that monologue. She said she congratulated Trump on his win and told him "we will help him and his team with their transition" and "we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power":
We must accept the results of this election. Earlier today I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power [...] a fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results.
As of this writing, Harris' social media profiles on X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok do not contain any statements that indicate plans for the vice president to be absent from Trump's inauguration ceremony in January 2025.
In sum, there was no evidence, nor news reports from credible outlets, that Harris had made such an announcement. The only outlet to cover the rumor, as of this writing, was another fact-checking outlet that also debunked the claim. If the rumor was true, a declaration of that kind would draw substantial media attention due to its political significance.
For those reasons, we have rated this claim false. Snopes reached out to Harris' campaign for its comment on the rumor, and we will update this report if we receive a response.
It's not unusual for losers of presidential elections to skip their opponents' inaugurations. According to the White House Historical Association, several U.S. presidents have not attended their successors' ceremonies, such as John Adams in 1801, John Quincy Adams in 1829, Martin Van Buren in 1841, Andrew Johnson in 1869 and Donald Trump in 2021. Trump wrote on X in reference to U.S. President Joe Biden's swearing-in ceremony: "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th."
However, then-Vice President Mike Pence did attend Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021.
We have investigated several other rumors about the results of the 2024 presidential election:
- Misleading Post Says Harris Only Won in States Not Requiring Voter ID in 2024
- Yes, Trump Will Be 2nd US President To Serve 2 Nonconsecutive Terms
- No, Biden Didn't Announce 2028 US Presidential Run Hours After 2024 Election
- No, Biden Didn't Post 'That's What You Get for Kicking Me Out of the Race' on Election Day
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