Agencies
Washington
United States President-elect Donald Trump has been welcomed to the White House by outgoing President Joe Biden as part of a traditional transition meeting.
The meeting between the two rivals in the Oval Office on Wednesday comes after a confrontational election campaign, in which Biden dropped out over the summer following a disastrous debate performance against Trump.
However, his vice president and successor as Democratic candidate for the presidency, Kamala Harris, lost out to Trump in the November 5 election by a decisive margin.
The two men greeted each other with a handshake in front of the cameras, as Biden told Trump he looked forward to a “peaceful transition”.
“I look forward to having a smooth transition and do everything we can to make sure you are accommodated, what you need. We’re going to get a chance to talk about some of that today,” Biden said to Trump, in front of a roaring fireplace. “Welcome back.”
Trump himself said that the transition would be “smooth as you can get”.
“Politics is tough, and in many cases it’s not a very nice world,” Trump added. “It is a nice world today and I appreciate very much a transition that’s so smooth, it will be as smooth as it can get.”
Biden and Trump were expected to discuss several important matters during their meeting, which comes almost two months ahead of the president-elect’s inauguration on January 20.
“They will go through the top issues – both domestic and foreign policy issues – including what is happening in Europe and Asia and the Middle East,” said Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, before the meeting.
“And the president will have the chance to explain to President Trump how he sees things… and talk to President Trump about how President Trump is thinking about taking on these issues when he takes office.”
The meeting between Biden and Trump marks a sharp turn of events from four years ago, when Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Trump disputed the election results and refused to host a transition meeting with Biden, or attend his inauguration.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, said the proceedings are a return to form in US governance.
She explained the importance of smooth transition processes, which usually involve several meetings and information sharing between members of the incoming and outgoing administrations, regardless of the party.
“It would be as if you would take the CEO of a major corporation with thousands and thousands of employees and remove the CEO on one day at noon, in this case, January, the 20th of the upcoming year,” she said, referring to inauguration day, “and then take out all of the top figures, including the board of the business.”
“In order for it to be smooth, you need to have cooperation on both sides,” she said, added that beyond Trump’s snub of Biden in 2020, his entry into the White House in 2016 was also notoriously chaotic, with members of his team often failing to meet with members of then-outgoing President Barack Obama’s administration.
“I think that will be different as well,” she told Al Jazeera. “This time, I hope that the Trump people will be more open to the transition material.”
Trump and Biden spent much of the presidential campaign talking ill about each other and the threat to democracy they purportedly represented, she noted. “But you won’t see any of that when they’re in front of the cameras. They’re going to be all smiles and pretending that they’re the best of friends. That’s politics in Washington, that’s how it works,” she added.
