Presidential Inauguration 2025: Planners balancing security and tradition
Inauguration 2025: Balancing tradition amid unprecedented security risks
Planning a presidential inauguration is never easy, but this time around – given recent events – it might be harder than ever before. FOX 5's Josh Rosenthal spoke to James, the owner and founder of Gordon C. James Public Relations, who worked on George H.W. Bush’s inauguration in 1989, then on both of George W. Bush’s inaugurations and Donald Trump’s first inauguration back in 2017.
WASHINGTON - Planning a presidential inauguration is never easy, but this time around – given recent events – it might be harder than ever before.
"I think things are a little more tense now than they were then," veteran inauguration planner Gordon James said Thursday.
James, the owner and founder of Gordon C. James Public Relations, worked on George H.W. Bush’s inauguration in 1989, then on both of George W. Bush’s inaugurations, and on Donald Trump’s first inauguration back in 2017.
"From my standpoint," James said, "it was just the greatest time in the world."
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But some things have changed. After this week’s tragedy in New Orleans, after the truck explosion in Las Vegas, after the assassination attempts and more, FOX 5 reached out to James to ask how different it would be to plan an inauguration now versus his first, more than three decades ago.
"The world’s changed. I mean the New Orleans thing is just bizarre … I don’t understand the Las Vegas thing. The assassination attempts on President Trump are just beyond belief," James explained, before adding, "there’s going to be a lot of pressure to make sure everything comes off perfectly."
"I don’t ever remember one hint of somebody saying it’s just not gonna be secure," James said of the 1989 inauguration. "I don’t remember that at all."
Still, he said some things haven’t changed. For instance, the sheer number of people you need working together to make an event the magnitude of a presidential inauguration work.