The logs were stacked high and flames filled the Oval Office fireplace as President Joe Biden sat next to President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday.
Biden smiled and extended his hand in welcome. It was a meeting Biden hoped could bring down the temperature in American politics but the halting introductions betrayed the awkwardness of the moment. It hadn’t been that long since Biden had called Trump a threat to democracy and national security and Trump had called Biden “crooked” and “low I.Q.”
“Mr. President elect, and the former President, and Donald, congratulations,” Biden said. “And, uh, looking forward to having a, like we said, smooth transition, do everything we can to make sure you are accommodated, what you need.” Trump replied: “Good.”
With that, Trump was welcomed back to the same office he left four years earlier after trying and failing to overturn Biden’s election victory. The President-elect thanked Biden and hinted at the high-octane political fight the two just came through. “Politics is tough, and it’s—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’ll be as smooth as it can get,” Trump said.
The meeting itself, which lasted nearly 2 hours, is part of Biden’s larger project to repair what Trump had broken when he denied the 2020 election results, sparked a violent attack on the Capitol, and refused to welcome in his successor. And Biden wants to impress upon Trump the benefits he sees in keeping in place many of his outgoing administration’s massive investments in American infrastructure like removing lead pipes, laying new broadband cables and moving the American economy away from fossil fuels.
But Trump’s picks for his cabinet and key White House posts indicate he’s gearing up to dismantle as much of Biden’s signature project as possible. Trump is assembling a combative team who are best known for their ability to ferociously defend Trump and his ideas on TV. Lee Zeldin, his pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency, promised to “restore US energy dominance.” His foreign policy team has been skeptical of America’s support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, which Biden has championed for nearly three years.
Before Trump arrived at the White House on Wednesday, he stopped to speak to House Republicans at a hotel near the Capitol and hinted he’d welcome Congressional Republicans changing the Constitution to allow him to run for a third term. “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you do something,” Trump told the GOP lawmakers in the ballroom.
Among the staff who came to Washington with Trump from Florida was his former campaign manager and future White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, his personal aide Natalie Harp, and his valet Walt Nauta. Nauta has pled not guilty to charges of concealing or withholding classified documents and obstruction of justice in the investigation into Trump’s possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s charges in that case are likely to be dropped, as Special Counsel Jack Smith decides how to wrap up the federal cases against Trump before Trump becomes President.
