Biden, Trump meet at White Home for transition talks – NBC New York

 Donald Trump made a victor’s return to Washington on Wednesday, visiting the White Home for an Oval Workplace assembly with Democratic President Joe Biden and committing to a easy transition of energy because the Republican president-elect strikes rapidly to construct out his new administration.

“Donald, congratulations,” Biden stated, greeting Trump with a handshake and including that he appeared “ahead to a easy transition.”

Trump made an analogous pledge and expressed because of Biden for the invitation — one which Trump himself had not prolonged to Biden after dropping the 2020 election.

“Thanks very a lot,” Trump stated. “Politics is hard. And it’s, in lots of circumstances, not a really good world. However it’s a good world in the present day and I respect it very a lot.”

Trump, flying from Florida, arrived at a navy base close to the Capitol, assembly up with billionaire Elon Musk for a morning session with Home Republicans as Trump prepares for a probably unified Republican authorities and sweep of energy.

Again in Washington for the primary time since his election victory, Trump instructed the GOP lawmakers, “It’s good to win.”

Trump obtained a standing ovation from Home Republicans, a lot of whom took cellphone movies of him as ran by their occasion’s victories up and down the poll, in what can be, beneath the constitutional limits, his remaining presidential election.

“I believe I received’t be operating once more except you say he’s good we acquired to determine one thing else,” Trump stated to laughter from the lawmakers.

It’s a shocking return to the U.S. seat of presidency for the previous president, who departed almost 4 years in the past a diminished, politically defeated chief after the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol however is getting ready to come back again to energy with what he and his GOP allies see as a mandate for governance.

“He’s the comeback king,” stated Home Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., earlier than Trump’s arrival. “We owe him an excellent debt of gratitude.”

The personal conferences, together with his sit-down with Biden, put in stark aid the previous president’s comeback. Trump’s reemergence comes amid Republican congressional management elections, with the potential for him to put his imprint on the end result.

Trump endorsed Johnson’s return to the speaker’s workplace with the president-elect saying he’s with Johnson all the way in which, based on an individual aware of the remarks however not approved to publicly talk about the personal assembly.

Musk has been spending a lot of his time at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida property, and collaborating in discussions because the incoming Trump administration prepares to transition from Biden’s.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, was named by Trump to a authorities effectivity advisory position. Musk, Some near Trump and his workforce now see Musk because the second most influential determine in Trump’s fast orbit, after Susie Wiles, the marketing campaign supervisor who’s Trump’s incoming chief of employees.

Johnson has stated Republicans are “able to ship on Trump’s ”America First” agenda.

After his election win in 2016, Trump met with President Barack Obama within the Oval Workplace and referred to as it “an excellent honor.” However he quickly was again to heaping insults on Obama, together with accusing his predecessor — with out proof — of getting wire-tapped him through the 2016 marketing campaign.

4 years later, Trump disputed his election loss to Biden, and he has continued to lie about widespread voter fraud that didn’t happen. He did not invite Biden, then the president-elect, to the White Home and he left Washington with out attending Biden’s inauguration. It was the primary time that had occurred since Andrew Johnson skipped Ulysses S. Grant’s swearing-in 155 years in the past.

Biden insists that he’ll do every little thing he can to make the transition to the subsequent Trump administration go easily. That is regardless of having spent greater than a yr campaigning for reelection and decrying Trump as a menace to democracy and the nation’s core values. Biden then bowed out of the race in July and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him.

Within the wake of the election, the president has deserted his dire warnings about Trump, saying in a speech final week, “The American experiment endures. We’re going to be OK.”

Historically, because the outgoing and incoming presidents meet within the West Wing, the primary girl hosts her successor upstairs within the residence, However her workplace stated Melania Trump wasn’t attending, saying in an announcement that “her husband’s return to the Oval Workplace to start the transition course of is encouraging, and she or he needs him nice success.”

When Trump left Washington in 2021, even some prime Republicans had begun to decry his position in serving to incite a mob of his supporters that had staged the violent assault on the Capitol mere weeks earlier, attempting to cease the certification of Biden’s election victory.

However his win in final week’s election completes a political comeback that has seen Trump as soon as once more turn into the unchallenged head of the GOP.

Wednesday’s journey was not the primary time Trump has returned to the Capitol space for the reason that finish of his first time period, although. Congressional Republicans hosted Trump over the summer time, as Trump was once more solidifying his dominance over the occasion.

His newest go to comes as Republicans, who wrested the Senate majority from Democrats in final week’s elections and are on the cusp of protecting GOP management of the Home, are within the midst of their very own management elections taking place behind closed doorways Wednesday.

The president-elect’s arrival will present one other enhance to Johnson, who has pulled ever-closer to Trump as he labored to maintain his majority — and his personal job with the gavel.

The speaker stated he expects to see Trump repeatedly all through the week, together with at an occasion later that night, and on the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida “all weekend.”

It is unclear whether or not Trump will even go to the Senate, which is entangled in a extra divisive closed-door management election within the three-way race to switch outgoing GOP Chief Mitch McConnell.

Trump’s allies are pushing GOP senators to vote for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who had been a longshot candidate difficult two extra senior Republicans, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, for the job.

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Related Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Farnoush Amiri, Zeke Miller, Darlene Superville and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.