Now that the May 18 graduation ceremony is over, the history books will record Trump is the only first-year president not invited to speak at the University of Notre Dame commencement ceremony in 65 years.
Trump tellingly was also not invited to speak in 2017, his first term in the office, and instead Vice President Mike Pence spoke to the Notre Dame graduates.
According to The College Fix, the tradition of the president speaking at Notre Dame's commencement during his first year in office started under President Eisenhower when he spoke there in 1960.
This year, however, the commencement speaker was Admiral Christopher Grady, the current acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The famous Catholic campus, located in South Bend, Indiana, is currently home to about 13,000 undergrads and graduate students.
It was founded in 1842 by Congregation of the Holy Cross, a religious order for priests and brothers that originated in France.
Micah Clark, director of the American Family Association of Indiana, tells AFN he recalls when Barack Obama delivered the commencement address in 2009.
“There was a lot of outrage over that because of his strong support for abortion, which goes against Catholic teaching,” Clark points out.
President Biden was invited to speak in 2020, his first year is office, but he did not speak because of a scheduling conflict.
The university did not respond to the Fix after it repeatedly tried to get comments as graduation day approached.
What is “quite ironic” for the Catholic university, Clark points out, is that President Trump has publicly defended the First Amendment guarantee to religious freedom, and he has been a pro-life president while in office, too.
“So you have a pro-life president, who supports religious freedom, not being invited to speak at Notre Dame. That raises a lot of eyebrows,” Clark says.
