by WorldTribune Staff, January 28, 2025 Real World News

Initially, the team putting together President Donald Trump’s inauguration were expecting rain and temperatures in the 40s on Jan. 20. But when the weather suddenly shifted and temps outside were expected to be near zero, Trump said the ceremony and other festivities would have to be moved inside and the team had 72 hours to make it happen.
A group of young Trump staffers worked through those 72 hours to put together what has been called one of the most memorable presidential inaugurals.
“The job got done thanks to a group of young members of Trump’s advance team who slept in the Capitol for days to prevent things being changed in their absence, the Daily Caller reported on Jan. 24.
The weather concern was brought up on Thursday night, Jan. 16, when then President-elect Trump called his executive producer, Justin Caporale.
Caporale told The Daily Caller that Trump’s swearing-in ceremony outdoors included such highlights as the first ever flyover of the U.S. Capitol during an inauguration ceremony that would have included eight F-16’s.
“It was Thursday … when the president called me and said, ‘Hey, the weather’s not looking great. We have to move this thing inside. It’s going to be dangerously cold.’ And he wasn’t wrong when he said that,” Caporale said. “We immediately pulled our teams together” and got to work.
Trump’s team was sleeping on couches and floors in the Speaker’s office and conference rooms at the Capitol to ensure Trump’s vision for the inauguration was executed and that there were no complications.
“Wearing pajamas in the U.S. Capitol was surreal—but walking the vacant halls of one of the most important buildings in the world was truly a sobering experience,” Joshua Sedore, the Director of Capitol Movements for the Inauguration, told The Daily Caller.
Caporale said he was with Trump all day on Jan. 20 — “literally by his side from that morning at St John’s through the inaugural balls” — and that Trump and first lady Melania Trump were “extremely happy” with how the ceremony turned out.
“[Trump] was very, very proud of that Rotunda. And he thought it was beautiful and gorgeous and it worked. And his stance now is that every president should be inaugurated in the Rotunda. It saves an incredible amount of money by doing it that way. It saves incredible amounts of manpower by doing it that way. And I mean, it showcases, you know, one of the crown jewels of our country’s political system,” Caporale said.
“In the back of our minds we’d always had weather contingency plans. But up until 72 hours before, we didn’t need them. So we pulled everybody together and the president asked, ‘What are my options?’ And obviously, two options presented themselves, which was one, to do it in the Rotunda, or two, to do it in Emancipation Hall,” Caporale said.
Trump chose the Rotunda: “Obviously beautiful, ornate setting, gorgeous photos, and just felt way more appropriate than doing it in the Capitol Visitor Center,” Caporale noted.
“I asked [Trump], let’s give it 12 more hours, everything can change in 12 hours,” Caporale said. “We woke up Friday morning. I gave him a call and said, ‘Sir, I just got a weather briefing. This isn’t changing. I’m going to put everything in motion. And I gathered everybody together at 7:30 in the morning in the conference room: the swearing-in team, the National Mall team, the parade team, and essentially laid out my vision of, ‘Here’s how this needs to happen moving forward.’
“How the schedule needs to be readjusted, how we need to keep people safe — not only the swearing-in component of it, but the farewell, the review of the troops, other things that happened outside that we needed to now pull inside,” he explained.
What about the the tens of thousands of Trump supporters who traveled to DC?
The answer was Capital One Arena, which the Trump team told The Daily Caller was always the backup plan for the parade. But Trump was skeptical: “What do you mean, ‘a parade inside’?” Caporale remembers the president asking him.
“I walked him through that I’ve already extended the contract for Capital One Arena. That was always our weather backup plan anyway for the parade. So I did suggest to him that we were going to host a viewing party there … I was confident I could fill it with 20,000 people,” Caporale said.
Steve Munoz, who served as the Director of Swearing In Ceremonies, called Mike Wagner, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC) executive director “and gave him the heads up” on the plan to move the inaugural festivities indoors, the report said.
“Munoz and Trump’s advance team had the goal to create a grand show, upholding the ritual of the inaugural, but were met with some complications from JCCIC over the next few days. For example, JCCIC was pushing back on the height of the stage and wanted to put Trump on a one foot stage, which the Trump Team believes would have been bad optics and would see him lost in the crowd. The Trump team pushed for a three foot stage instead. JCCIC also originally only had six seats on stage in their planning map, which was obtained by the Caller. Those plans quickly changed after Trump’s team got involved,” the report continued.
Sources told The Daily Caller that JCCIC wanted to cancel the review of the troops and that the Trump team had to argue and negotiate with JCCIC to say it could be done. JCCIC’s main concern was that there wasn’t enough space in Emancipation Hall and that troops would not be able to march through.
“It was Steven Munoz. Steven Munoz should get credit in this story as the director of the swearing in ceremony, because if it wasn’t for him, a lot of this would not have happened,” Caporale explained. “He was the one that put together these diagrams, went out there with the tape measure and did not stop, because … it was important to the president.”
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