Arizona National Guard to provide support for Donald Trump inauguration
Jan 12, 2017, 4:57 PM | Updated: 8:50 pm
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
PHOENIX — About 20 members of the Arizona National Guard will provide support during President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next week.
In a press release, the Arizona National Guard said the servicemen and women from the Arizona Air National Guard’s 161st Air Refueling Wing and 162nd Wing specialize in food service and will help cook and serve meals to the 7,500 guardsmen who will be in Washington, D.C. for the inauguration.
The meals will be served out of a mobile military kitchen.
The troops will depart on Sunday for Friday’s inauguration. They are scheduled to return to Arizona on Saturday.
Trump has called for celebrities to stay away from the event, saying he wants regular people to be able to attend instead.
The so-called "A" list celebrities are all wanting tixs to the inauguration, but look what they did for Hillary, NOTHING. I want the PEOPLE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2016
Tom Barrack, a longtime Trump friend serving as his top inauguration planner, told reporters Tuesday at Trump Tower that the president-elect instructed him to make the swearing-in “about the people, not about him.”
“So what we’ve done, instead of trying to surround him with what people consider A-listers, is we are going to surround him with the soft sensuality of the place,” Barrack said.
“It’s a much more poetic cadence than having a circus-like celebration that’s a coronation. It will be beautiful. The cadence of it is going to be, ‘Let me get back to work.’”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.