In 2020, such a meeting did not take place due to the rejection of the election results.
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 it would go “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-year-old Biden portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy, while 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 responded through the shouting, although Trump appeared to say “thank you” at one point, The Guardian wrote.
“Politics is hard and in many cases it’s not a nice world, but today it’s 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.
