President-elect Trump and President Biden both promised a smooth transition between administrations when they met at the White House on Wednesday morning.
“I look forward to a smooth transfer. “We’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated and have what you need,” President Biden stated as cameras and reporters were briefly permitted inside the Oval Office for the meeting.
Second, Trump underlined that “politics is tough, and in many cases it’s not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today.”
“I really appreciate the smooth changeover. It will be as seamless as possible, and I greatly appreciate it, the former and future president said.
Trump returned to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue just over a week after his landslide election victory, making his first visit to the White House in over four years. He arrived at the White House at the invitation of Biden, the politician he defeated in the 2024 presidential contest.
The meeting with his predecessor and now successor was likely awkward for Biden, who ended his own re-election bid in July, a month after his disastrous debate performance against Trump reignited questions about whether the 81-year-old president was physically and mentally capable of serving another four years in the White House and sparked calls for him to drop out.
Trump spent years verbally attacking Biden and his work in the White House. Even after Biden dropped his re-election bid, Trump continued to criticize the president and his successor on the Democrats’ 2024 ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris.
And, for several years, Biden has described Trump as a threat to the nation’s democracy.
However, Biden, a traditionalist, wants to ensure a smooth transition between administrations.
Biden extended an invitation to Trump to visit the White House, which he himself never received.
Four years ago, following his electoral setback at the hands of Biden, Trump refused to concede and unsuccessfully attempted to reverse the results.
Trump declined to invite Biden to the White House, breaking with longtime convention. And two weeks after Trump supporters attacked the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn congressional certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory, Trump left Washington ahead of his successor’s presidential inauguration, becoming the first sitting president in a century and a half to skip an inauguration.
According to insiders, incoming White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and current White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients were present on Wednesday when Trump and Biden spoke behind closed doors.
“President Biden’s decision to welcome President-elect Trump to the White House reflects a return to normalcy in the presidential transition process. Veteran political scientist Wayne Lesperance told Fox News that what was denied to Joe Biden after his election is now being restored to his credit.
Lesperance, president of New Hampshire’s New England College, described Biden’s invitation as “a remarkable gesture in that it legitimizes Trump’s return to power by the nation’s leading Democrat and, hopefully, will be met with a commitment to orderly transitions in the future.”
The encounter will be Biden and Trump’s first since their one-time debate on June 27 in Atlanta, Georgia.
The two presidents, together with Harris and Trump’s running partner and now vice president-elect, Sen. JD Vance, stood next to one other on September 11 in Lower Manhattan during events commemorating the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
This was Trump’s second encounter in the White House with a leaving president.
Eight years ago, after defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump met with President Barack Obama at the White House, who was nearing the end of his second term as president.
“We’re going to do everything we can to help you succeed. “Because if you succeed, the country succeeds,” Obama told Trump back then.
While a tradition, the meeting of the incoming and outgoing presidents is not required.