US President-elect Donald Trump made a triumphant return to Washington on Wednesday, visiting the White House for an Oval Office meeting with President Joe Biden and vowing a smooth transition of power as the president-elect moves quickly to build his new administration.
The two rivals sat in front of the roaring fire and shook hands in the Oval Office while reporters watched the match. Biden described Trump as “Mr. President-elect and former President” before settling on “The Donald.”
“Congratulations,” the Democrat told the Republican. “I look forward to having a smooth transition, as they said,” Biden said. “Hello. Welcome back.”
Trump responded, saying: “Thank you very much,” saying, “Politics is difficult.” Which, in many cases, is not a very nice world. But the world is beautiful today, and I appreciate that very much.”
Neither man answered the questions shouted by the media. At one point, Biden looked at Trump, who cocked his head to the side and shrugged slightly but did not respond. Each was joined by his chief of staff for the private meeting that is a traditional part of a peaceful handover of power, but a ritual that Trump refused to participate in four years ago after losing to Biden.
First Lady Jill Biden received Trump upon his arrival at the White House and presented him with a handwritten letter of congratulations to his wife, Melania Trump, who did not make the trip to Washington. The letter also expressed the First Lady’s team’s willingness to assist with the transition.
As Trump met with Biden, Trump sent a fundraising email to his supporters saying he was “inside the White House right now having a very important meeting.”
Trump had flown in from Florida in the morning, and joined billionaire Elon Musk in a morning session with Republicans in the House of Representatives. This discussion came as Trump prepares to form a unified Republican government and sweep to power.
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Returning to Washington for the first time since his election victory, Trump told GOP lawmakers: “It’s nice to win.”
He received a standing ovation from House GOP members, many of whom captured cellphone videos of Trump running through their party’s victories up and down the ballot in what could be, under constitutional limits, his final presidential election.
“I guess I won’t run again unless you say it’s good, and we have to think about something else,” Trump said, amid laughter from lawmakers.
It is a stunning return to the seat of the US government for the former president, who left Washington in January 2021 as a politically defeated leader after the attack on the Capitol. Today, he is preparing to return to power with what he and his allies in the Republican Party see as a mandate to govern.
“He is the king of comebacks,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Los Angeles, said before Trump’s arrival. “We owe him a huge debt of gratitude.”
The private meetings, including his sit-down with Biden, have starkly highlighted the former president’s remarkable political recovery. The resurgence comes amid the GOP leadership race in Congress – with the possibility that he could leave his mark on the outcome.
Trump has backed Johnson’s return to the Speaker’s Office with the president-elect saying he is with Johnson all the way, according to a person familiar with the remarks but not authorized to discuss the private meeting publicly.
Musk’s joining of Trump upon his return to Washington comes after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO spent much of his time at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate, participating in discussions as the incoming Trump administration prepares to transition from the Biden administration.
Trump has appointed Musk to a government advisory role on efficiency in his incoming administration. Some people close to Trump and his team now see Musk as the second most influential person in Trump’s immediate orbit, after Susie Wells, the campaign manager who will be Trump’s next chief of staff.
After winning the election in 2016, Trump met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office and called it a “great honor.” But he quickly returned to hurling insults at Obama, including accusing his predecessor – without evidence – of wiretapping him during the 2016 campaign.
Four years later, Trump disputed his election loss to Biden and continued to lie about widespread voter fraud that did not occur. Biden, then president-elect, was not invited to the White House, and he left Washington without attending Biden’s inauguration. It was the first time that had happened since Andrew Johnson took the oath of Ulysses S. Grant 155 years ago.
Biden insists that he will do everything in his power to make the transition to the next Trump administration go smoothly. This is despite spending more than a year campaigning for re-election and denouncing Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s core values. Biden then dropped out of the race in July, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him.
Traditionally, when the outgoing and incoming presidents meet in the West Wing, the first lady hosts her successor upstairs, but her office said Melania Trump did not attend, saying in a statement that “her husband’s return to the Oval Office to begin the transition process is encouraging.” We wish him great success.”
When Trump left Washington in 2021, even some senior Republicans began to decry his role in helping incite a mob of his supporters who had launched the violent attack on the Capitol just weeks earlier, trying to stop the certification of Biden’s election victory.
But his election victory last week completes a political comeback that has once again made Trump the undisputed head of the Republican Party.
However, Wednesday’s trip was not the first time Trump has returned to the Capitol area since the end of his first term. Congressional Republicans hosted Trump over the summer, as Trump was once again consolidating his control of the party.
In last week’s elections, Republicans took the Senate majority from Democrats and are on the verge of retaining control of the House of Representatives, in the midst of their leadership elections taking place behind closed doors on Wednesday. Johnson has moved ever closer to Trump as he works to preserve his majority — and his gavel job.
It is unclear whether Trump will also visit the Senate, which is embroiled in a more divisive closed leadership election in the three-way race to replace outgoing GOP leader Mitch McConnell.
Trump’s allies are pushing GOP senators to vote for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who has been a long-shot candidate competing with two other top Republicans, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, for the position.
