US President-elect Donald Trump thanked President Joe Biden for promising a smooth transition of power, as the victorious Republican made a historic return to the White House on Wednesday.
“Politics is hard and in many ways it’s not a very nice world. It’s a nice world today and I appreciate it very much,” Trump said after the two men shook hands in the Oval Office.
Trump, 78, said the transition would be “as smooth as possible.”
Biden welcomed Trump in front of the blazing fire, congratulated him and said: “Welcome back.”
Biden, 81, invited his sworn rival to the White House – despite the fact that Trump, who refused to accept his defeat in the 2020 election, never extended the same courtesy to Biden.
Biden, who dropped out of the election in July but lost to Trump last week to his successor Kamala Harris, said he is “looking forward to a smooth transition.”
“We will do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated, you get what you need,” he told Trump.
victorious trump
Their conversation after a public handshake could be a bitter pill to swallow for Biden, who has described Trump as a threat to democracy.
During the meeting, Biden was expected to press Trump to continue US support for Ukraine’s war against Russia, which Republicans have questioned.
Before the trip to the White House, Trump addressed Republicans from the House of Representatives at a Washington hotel near the Capitol, where a crowd of his supporters had marched to try to overturn his election loss in 2021.
An agitated Trump suggested he might even be up for a third term in office – which would be a violation of the US Constitution.
“I suspect I’m not going to run again unless you say, ‘That’s cool, we’ve got to think of something else,'” he said, eliciting some laughs.
Trump’s party looks set to capture both houses of Congress and consolidate his extraordinary comeback.
She was accompanied at the meeting with Republicans by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, whom they named on Tuesday as the head of a new group aimed at cutting government spending.
Trump has made a flurry of nominations as he moves rapidly toward renaming his administration.
choosing your team
Biden’s Oval Office invitation reinstated the presidential transition tradition that Trump broke when he lost the 2020 election, refusing to sit down with Biden or even attend the inauguration .
When the tycoon won the 2016 election, then President Barack Obama welcomed Trump to the White House.
But by the time Trump took off on his last Marine One flight from the White House lawn on January 20, 2021, he was disowned by many in his own party for promoting the attack on the Capitol.
That period of humiliation soon ended, however, as Republicans returned to Trump’s favor, recognizing his unparalleled electoral power as the head of the right-wing movement.
Trump is entering his second term with an almost complete grip on his party and the Democrats.
Since the election he has spent a week assembling his top team at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, as the world watches how closely he follows through on his promises of isolationism, mass deportations and sweeping tariffs. Persist.
Trump nominated SpaceX, Tesla and
Trump is moving quickly to fill out his administration, and is choosing many ultra-loyalists.
Trump nominated Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth as his incoming Secretary of Defense. An outspoken opponent of so-called “woke” ideology in the armed forces, Hegseth has little similar experience managing huge American military budgets and bureaucracies.
Trump nominated South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem — an aide who famously wrote about shooting her dog because it did not respond to training — to head the Department of Homeland Security.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)