Acting US President Joe Biden received the newly elected head of state Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday. At the beginning of the meeting, they shook hands and promised that there would be a “smooth” transfer of power. TASR informs about it according to AP and Reuters reports.
“Welcome back,” Biden told Trump. He promised the Republican a smooth handover and would do everything in his power to “accommodate” him. Trump thanked him and said that it will run “as smoothly as possible”.
Reuters notes that this was a significant difference from the criticism that both politicians have hurled at each other for years. Their teams take vastly different positions on a variety of issues – from climate change to Russia to trade. Eighty-one years old Biden portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy, while the 78-year-old Trump called him incompetent.
Journalists were allowed to attend the meeting only briefly. In the broadcast footage, Trump and Biden can be seen sitting in armchairs by a burning fireplace and smiling as reporters ask them questions. Neither of them responds through the shouting, though Trump does appear to say “thank you” at one point. wrote The Guardian.
“Politics is hard and in many cases it is not a nice world, but today it is a nice world,” the media quoted Trump as one of the few statements politicians made on the occasion.
In 2020, when Biden won the presidential election, no such meeting took place because Trump refused to recognize the Democrat’s victory and his defeat. At that time, the Republican tried to overturn the election results.
