President-elect Donald Trump visited the White House on Wednesday for the first time since leaving office in 2021 to meet with President Joe Biden.
The two men sat in the Oval Office and shook hands, a somewhat disorienting image given their history of volatile public feuds. The meeting comes just a week after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Biden told Trump he is looking forward to a “smooth transition” come January, saying that his administration will do "everything we can to make sure you're accommodated."
“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," he said to Biden, who stepped down as the Democratic nominee in July. "And I appreciate it very much. A transition that’s so smooth, it'll be as smooth as it can get, and I very much appreciate that, Joe."
Biden and Trump posed briefly for photos but did not answer any questions.
First Lady Jill Biden had also invited Melania Trump to the White House on Wednesday, but the latter did not travel to Washington with her husband, ABC News reported.
In 2020, Trump failed to offer Biden a similar meeting in the White House as he refused to accept the results of the 2020 election. That refusal eventually resulted in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,
Before meeting with Biden on Wednesday, Trump addressed House Republicans, who are on the verge of formally winning a House majority.
“Isn’t it nice to win? It’s nice to win. It’s always nice to win. A lot of good friends in this room,” Trump said on Capitol Hill. “So you know we had like historic kind of numbers. Especially for the president, but we won’t get into that. But the House did very well.”
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