Ronald and Nancy Reagan were disappointed.
That’s what White House press secretary Larry Speakes told reporters on Jan. 18, 1985, after the Republican president and first lady decided to hold his second inauguration indoors because of the unusually frigid weather forecast.
“They really felt like they had no choice,” Speakes said two days before the ceremony, according to archived transcripts of press conferences held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California.
President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to take the oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, when subfreezing temperatures are expected again, is reminiscent of the last time frigid weather prompted a similar decision.
The 1985 transcripts shed lithe on the Reagans’ thinking.
“There were high-level medical and military consultations and it was just a very serious health and safety issue,” Speakes said, according to transcripts provided Friday by the Reagan Library. “We probably would have had very serious problems for some of the participants.”
Like what, reporters asked.
On a day when the temperature reached 7 degrees Fahrenheit (-14 degrees Celsius) in Washington, “medics told them that if wind chill factors like that occurred, exposed areas would freeze in less than five minutes,” Speakes said .
Speakes dismissed concerns about Reagan’s own health as a man taking office for a second time at nearly 74. (Trump turned 78 in June, making him the oldest person to begin a term as president. President Joe Biden, who will be in the audience as Trump takes the oath of office, is 82.)
Reagan’s box on the west steps of the Capitol would have been heated, so “no, I don’t think that was ever expressed to the president,” Speakes said.
According to Speakes, it was the thousands of people attending the parade, standing along the parade route and crowding the National Mall that caused the president and first lady more concern.
“The Reagans looked at this … knew that parade participants could stay out there for four hours, if not longer,” he said. “So it was just clear that, as the doctors told them, they would have had severe frostbite if not for other illnesses that could have been worse.”
