President-elect Donald Trump returned to the White House for the first time in almost four years for his transition meeting with President Joe Biden.
The men’s Oval Office meeting is the first presidential transition sit-down since former President Barack Obama invited Trump to the White House in 2016 after his win against then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump did not invite Biden in 2020 amid his challenges to that election before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The two-hour meeting started at 11:07 a.m., with Biden congratulating Trump on his 2024 election win and saying he looked “forward to having a smooth transition.”
“Politics is tough and in many cases it’s not a nice world but it is a nice world today,” Trump said on Wednesday. “It will be as smooth as it can get and I very much appreciate that, Joe.”
Biden replied, “You’re welcome.”
The White House previewed the meeting this week by repeating that it is important to Biden to sit down with Trump because Biden believes in “norms,” “institutions,” and “order,” despite describing Trump as a threat to democracy and, as recently as last month, Biden aides agreeing with former Trump White House chief of staff John Kelly‘s contention that Trump fits the definition of a fascist.
“The American people deserve this, they deserve a peaceful transfer of power,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday. “[White House] chief of staff Jeff Zients has been pretty, pretty open and available to the Trump transition team and will continue to do so. We want this to go well. We want this to be a process that gets the job done. And so it’s certainly, we’re going to do anything that we can.”
Zients has been leading the White House Transition Coordinating Committee with Trump’s transition team, which is headed by former Trump Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, in addition to Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump. Both Zients and incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles were in Wednesday’s meeting.
Although Biden and Trump have resumed the tradition of meeting, first lady Jill Biden and former first lady Melania Trump have not, with the latter declining the former’s invitation for tea.
“The Bidens extended congratulations and a joint invite to the Trumps to meet at the White House,” a spokeswoman for the first lady told the Washington Examiner.
The Jill Biden spokeswoman added, “The first lady joined President Biden in greeting President-elect Trump upon his arrival to the White House this morning. She gave Mr. Trump a handwritten letter of congratulations for Mrs. Trump, which also expressed her team’s readiness to assist with the transition.”
Melania Trump’s office confirmed earlier Wednesday that she would not be traveling to Washington with her husband but did not provide reasons.
Reports circulated last weekend that Melania Trump had a conflicting book tour event and remained angry with the FBI after agents executed a search warrant at the Trumps’ private Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in 2022 as part of a federal investigation into whether the former president mishandled classified documents. Melania Trump is not expected to move back to Washington full-time. Instead, she is anticipated to split her time between Florida and New York, where Barron Trump, her only son with Donald Trump, will attend college.
After winning last week’s election against Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump quickly named his campaign co-manager Wiles as his White House chief of staff. This week, Trump appointed Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) to be his national security adviser, Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be his defense secretary, Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) to be homeland security secretary, and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to be CIA director. There are rumors that the president-elect will nominate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to be secretary of state. He has not yet announced his nominee for treasury secretary.
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Trump, too, said entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would spearhead a new department called the Department of Government Efficiency.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump met on Capitol Hill with House Republicans and backed Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to lead the House once again.
