Before he comes again for good on Inauguration Day, Donald Trump will return to the White House briefly on the invitation of Democratic President Joe Biden, who had hoped to defeat his Republican predecessor a second time and reside there for 4 extra years.
That could make for a clumsy encounter, particularly provided that, after Biden ousted Trump in 2020, Trump provided no such White House invitation to Biden. Trump even left Washington earlier than the Jan. 20, 2021, inauguration, changing into the primary president to take action since Andrew Johnson skipped the 1869 swearing-in of Ulysses S. Grant.
Biden additionally has the bizarre distinction of getting crushed Trump in a single cycle and run towards him for about 15 months throughout this yr’s marketing campaign. As he sought reelection, Biden continuously decried Trump as a risk to democracy and the nation’s core values earlier than leaving the race in July and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, who took on her personal marketing campaign and misplaced on Election Day.
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When the 2 meet within the Oval Office on Wednesday, it’ll technically be the primary time since 1992 that an outgoing president sits down with an incoming one he competed towards in a marketing campaign. Back then, Republican President George H.W. Bush met with Democrat and President-elect Bill Clinton about two weeks after they squared off on Election Day.
Bush and Clinton talked coverage earlier than going collectively to the Roosevelt Room to fulfill with their transition employees. Clinton later known as the assembly “terrific” and stated Bush was “very useful.”
Over the many years, such handoff conferences between outgoing presidents and their replacements have been by turns pleasant, tense and someplace in between.
This time, Biden has vowed to make sure a easy transition and emphasised the significance of working with Trump, who’s each his presidential predecessor and successor, to convey the nation collectively. Biden’s White House invitation to Trump contains his spouse, the previous and now incoming first woman, Melania Trump.
“I assured him that I’d direct my whole administration to work together with his staff,” Biden stated of the decision with Trump when he made the invitation. The president-elect “appears ahead to the assembly,” spokesman Steven Cheung stated.
Jim Bendat, a historian and creator of “Democracy’s Big Day: The Inauguration of Our President,” known as face-to-face chats between outgoing and incoming presidents “wholesome for democracy.”
“I’m happy to see that the Democrats have chosen to take the excessive street and returned to the traditions that actually do make America nice,” Bendat stated.
Trump has completed this earlier than
This yr’s assembly will not be uncharted territory for Trump.
He and then-Democratic President Barack Obama held a longer-than-scheduled 90-minute Oval Office dialogue days after the 2016 election. White House chief of employees Denis McDonough additionally confirmed Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner across the West Wing.
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“We now are going to need to do all the things we will that can assist you succeed. Because, if you happen to succeed, then the nation succeeds,” Obama advised Trump, regardless of the president-elect being recent off a victory that dented the outgoing president’s legacy.
Trump appeared nervous and was unusually subdued, calling Obama “ man” and the assembly “a terrific honor.” He stated he had “nice respect” for Obama and that they “mentioned a number of totally different conditions, some fantastic and a few difficulties.”
“I very a lot sit up for coping with the president sooner or later, together with counsel,” Trump stated. Obama White House press secretary Josh Earnest described the assembly as “at the very least rather less awkward than some may need anticipated,” and he famous that the 2 “didn’t relitigate their variations within the Oval Office.”
In reality, that encounter went easily sufficient to reassure a number of Trump critics that he would possibly develop into the job and turn into extra presidential in temperament and motion — an evaluation shortly subsumed by Trump’s distinctive relish of bombast and political battle as soon as his administration started, significantly when it got here to his predecessor.
Only about 4 months later, Trump accused Obama – with out proof – of getting his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower earlier than the 2016 election. On social media, he blasted the previous president for participating in “McCarthyism” and decrying it as “Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) man!”
Obama aides now say that whereas the 2016 Trump-Obama assembly went nicely publicly, the incoming president’s staff ignored many of the transition course of and didn’t have the identical reverence for the White House and federal establishments that they or Republican President George W. Bush’s staff had.
One recalled that the one query Trump counterparts requested on the time was not concerning the coming workload or duties, however how finest to search out an house in Washington.
A practice, however not a requirement
The official transition course of doesn’t mandate that presidents invite their successors to face-to-face conferences, although it will possibly really feel that method.
“The psychological switch happens then,” former Vice President Walter Mondale as soon as stated.
There’s no document of George Washington scheduling a proper assembly with the nation’s second president, John Adams, earlier than leaving the then-capital metropolis of New York. And Adams, after transferring into the White House throughout his time period, by no means invited his political rival and successor, Thomas Jefferson, over earlier than leaving with out attending Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801.
Still, by 1841, President Martin Van Buren hosted President-elect William Henry Harrison — who had soundly crushed him on Election Day — for dinner on the White House. He even later provided to depart the official residence early to make room for his successor after Washington’s National Hotel, the place Harrison had been staying, grew to become overcrowded. Harrison as an alternative made a short, preinaugural journey to Virginia.
More not too long ago, Republican George W. Bush welcomed Obama to the White House in 2008 after calling the election of the nation’s first Black president a “triumph of the American story.”
And eight years prior, Bush himself was the newcomer when he met with the outgoing Clinton, who had denied his father a second time period. Their chat got here simply eight days after the Supreme Court resolved the disputed 2000 election, and Bush additionally later headed to the vice presidential residence to briefly discuss with the person he defeated, Al Gore.
Bush and Gore did not say what they mentioned, although vice presidential press aide Jim Kennedy described the dialog as meant to ″reveal that this can be a nation the place we put apart our variations after a protracted and troublesome marketing campaign.″
Trump and Harris spoke by cellphone this previous week however do not have a face-to-face assembly deliberate.
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