External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar attended the inaugural celebrations during the swearing-in ceremony of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on Monday.
During the celebrations, Jaishankar met several key figures of Trump’s administration, including the 56th Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
He also interacted with the nominee for the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the Trump Administration, Kash Patel. Patel had said that with the return of Trump, the American dream was "alive and well".
"We have been given a gift by God today to usher in a new dynasty, because we just inaugurated Donald J Trump as our 47th President, and we just inaugurated J.D. Vance as our Vice President of the United States," Patel he was quoted as saying, shortly after the swearing-in at the Capitol Rotunda.
"And we did that because the American Dream is alive and well because you chose that our dream can be the dream for our children and the dream for our world."
Patel is a former public defender who has seen a meteoric rise in the power structure of Washington DC in recent years, rising up to be the Chief of Staff at the Department of Defence and Deputy Director of National Intelligence in President Trump's first term.
Patel has now been nominated to head the FBI, an agency that investigated Trump for alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office in 2021 and for trying to overturn the 2020 election defeat to President Joe Biden.
Jaishankar had said that it was a "great honour" to represent India at the inauguration ceremony of US President Donald Trump.
He shared several photos of the inauguration ceremony on X and wrote, "A great honour to represent India at the inauguration ceremony of @POTUS President Donald J Trump and @VP Vice President JD Vance in Washington DC today."
His attendance underscores the importance of India-US relations and the global diplomatic ties shared between the two nations as President Trump begins his second stint in office.