Rick Scott pleads with Donald Trump to attend Joe Biden inauguration

Rick Scott with Donald Trump. Image via AP.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who voted this week to invalidate electors in the presidential election, is now urging the President to reverse course and attend his successor’s inauguration.

Scott voted against Pennsylvania electors’ certification even after mobs besieged the Capitol to compel that very result, released a statement Friday imploring President Donald Trump to attend President-elect Joe Biden‘s swearing-in on Jan. 20.

That concession, said Scott, would demonstrate a “peaceful transfer of power to the world.”

“I am urging the President to reconsider his decision to skip the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. He is, of course, not constitutionally required to attend, and I can imagine losing an election is very hard, but I believe he should attend. I plan to attend and believe it is an important tradition that demonstrates the peaceful transfer of power to our people and the world,” the Senator asserted.

Scott, who was first elected to the Senate in 2018, has to imagine losing an election because, unlike Trump, Florida’s junior Senator has never tasted electoral defeat. Before his Senate run, he won two elections for Florida Governor.

Earlier on Friday, Trump said he wasn’t attending, in a statement that likely surprised few.

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” the President tweeted from his recently reactivated @RealDonaldTrump tag.

Scott imploring Trump to attend the Biden inauguration comes when concerns have been raised on both the left and the right about whether the President should continue in office.

There are real questions about such novel solutions as the Vice President invoking the 25th Amendment, a fast-tracked impeachment process that may have more traction in the Senate than it did last time around, and other abrupt terminations to the Trump era that may render Mike Pence the President by the time Biden and Harris are inaugurated Jan. 20.