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Hello and welcome to the Punch Bowl News Readback podcast. I'm your host, Max Cohen, and today I'm joined by our senior congressional reporter, our Senate expert, Andrew Desiderio. Andrew,

how you doing, man? Max, doing well. Hello. We have a great topic this week. We're talking about

the inauguration and its new position inside the Capitol, inside the rotunda. And you were one of

just a few reporters who could actually be there in the moment. So I want to hear all about your

experience. First off, tell us how that happened. Why was the inauguration moved inside and what were the implications?

Well, look, the president elected at the time. Now the president had requested that it be moved indoors. They said it was obviously because of the frigid temperatures that were going to be coming here to Washington over the next few days.

And, you know, it immediately prompted criticism from Donald Trump's antagonists and political opponents that he was only doing this because he was worried that the crowd size would be smaller as a result of the frigid temperatures outside.

So we knew it was going to be cold, but the president asked that it be held indoors,

which meant that not only would we have a very unconventional inauguration,

but that it would set off this massive scramble inside the Capitol in terms of getting everyone

credentialed, getting the

security protocols set up and renewed, essentially. And it also meant that all of the months

of hard work and money that went into constructing the inauguration platform on the west front

of the Capitol was for naught. And so we actually, we look back at the history of this,

and the last time this happened was in 1985 for Ronald Reagan's second inauguration.

And it was for the same reason, for frigid temperatures, of course.

And so we were trying to use that as sort of a guide to help us understand what it would be like inside the rotunda, what the press access would be like, and, you know, of course, the ability for members of Congress to actually attend. Now, members of Congress can usually have their spouses with them, their families, they can have, you know, special guests on the main platform with them. Obviously,

...