Trump White House Archived / Flickr (Left), The White House / Flickr (Right)
CV NEWS FEED // President Joe Biden greeted President-elect Donald Trump with a smile and handshake as the two men met in the Oval Office on Wednesday morning. Both presidents promised there will be a “smooth transition” between their respective administrations.
“Well Mr. President-elect and former President, Donald, congratulations,” Biden said as he shook Trump’s hand in front of the office’s fireplace.
Biden added that he is “looking forward to having, like we said, a smooth transition.”
“We can make sure you’re coming in with what you need,” he continued. “And we’re going to get a chance to talk about some of that today.”
“Good,” Trump replied, nodding.
“Welcome, welcome back,” Biden said to the president-elect.
“Thank you very much,” Trump responded. “Politics is tough, and it’s [in] many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today. And I appreciate very much … a transition that’s so smooth, it will be as smooth as it can get, and I very much appreciate it.”
“Today I met with President-elect Trump in the Oval Office,” Biden’s government X (formerly Twitter) account posted Wednesday afternoon. “I look forward to leading a smooth transition and peaceful transfer of power.”
“As I told the President-elect, my team is committed to doing everything we can to ensure the incoming administration has what they need,” the post added.
According to The New York Post, Trump and Biden attended the meeting along with “their respective chiefs of staff, Susie Wiles and Jeff Zients, as they discussed topics including the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.”
Trump told the Post: “I asked for his views and he gave them to me.”
“I wanted to know his views on where we are and what, what he thinks,” the president-elect added. “And he gave them to me, he was very gracious.”
The Daily Wire reported that the “meeting comes at the end of an often-fiery relationship between the two presidents,” adding that Biden has repeatedly called Trump “a threat to democracy.”
However, “Melania Trump declined Jill Biden’s invitation to the traditional First Ladies’ tea, reportedly a response to the Biden administration’s raid on Mar-a-Lago,” The Daily Wire noted.
When Trump is inaugurated, Biden will become only the second president in American history to have the same predecessor and successor. The first, Republican Benjamin Harrison, served a single term from 1889 to 1893 and was both preceded and succeeded by Democrat Grover Cleveland.
When Trump begins his second term, Biden will also become the country’s first one-term president since George H.W. Bush left office in 1993.
