Biden Met With Trump In DC
In a historic and rather surreal photo op, President-elect Donald Trump met with outgoing President Joe Biden in the Oval Office, setting the stage for one of the most peculiar transitions of power in recent memory. Despite their often public disdain for each other, both leaders managed to keep the meeting cordial, exchanging smiles and even polite congratulations.
Biden, looking relaxed, congratulated Trump on his victory and promised a smooth transition—a gesture marking the first time in American history a president would be passing the torch back to a predecessor in a non-consecutive term, a feat only accomplished once before by Grover Cleveland.
HOLY SMOKES. Biden-Harris staffers came out of their offices to catch a glimpse of Trump during his return to The White House.
CNN: “It’s REALLY stunning.”
Even his detractors recognize the magnitude of the moment. pic.twitter.com/9CoMHAroBo
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) November 13, 2024
The meeting lasted nearly two hours, longer than Trump’s initial meeting with President Barack Obama back in 2016. During the conversation, Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients and incoming chief Susie Wiles joined in, discussing what White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre later described as a “substantive exchange of views.” She noted that Trump came prepared with a list of detailed questions, although she declined to reveal the specifics or whether Trump’s previous refusal to recognize Biden’s 2020 victory was addressed.
In what might be one of the more ironic twists of this transition, photos of the meeting were widely circulated, sparking a wave of social media commentary about the contentious rhetoric that has dominated recent political discourse.
For years, Trump’s critics, particularly on the left, had sought to cast him in near-apocalyptic terms, likening his presidency to an existential threat to American democracy. Pundits and politicians painted Trump as a would-be tyrant, yet this transition of power—complete with Biden’s handshake and Trump’s congeniality—proved that the doomsday predictions were just that: predictions, not reality.
President Biden: “Congratulations. Looking forward to a smooth transition…Welcome back.”
President-elect Trump: “Politics is tough and it’s in many cases not a nice world, but it is a nice world today. I appreciate it very much.” pic.twitter.com/OUQLkb12tC
— CSPAN (@cspan) November 13, 2024
The scene was undeniably striking: a smiling Trump returning to the Oval Office after what many had written off as an end to his political career, facing Biden, who had once vowed to be the administration that would close the chapter on Trumpism.
And yet, here they were, finding common ground, however brief, in the shared ritual of American governance. In the end, the sky did not fall, democracy was not shattered, and despite intense ideological divides, the machinery of transition rolled on as it has for over two centuries.