International Courant
WASHINGTON — Earlier than he returns for good on Inauguration Day, Donald Trump will return to the White Home shortly the invitation of the Democratic president Joe Bidenwho had hoped to defeat his Republican predecessor a second time and keep there 4 extra years.
That would make for a clumsy assembly, particularly contemplating that after Biden ousted Trump in 2020, Trump didn’t lengthen such an invite from the White Home to Biden. Trump even left Washington earlier than the inauguration on January 20, 2021He grew to become the primary president to take action since Andrew Johnson skipped the swearing-in of Ulysses S. Grant in 1869.
Biden additionally has the weird distinction of defeating Trump in a single cycle and working towards him for about 15 months throughout this yr’s marketing campaign. Whereas working for re-election, Biden frequently labeled Trump as one menace to democracy and the nation’s core values for leaving the race in July and endorse vice chairman Kamala Harriswho took on her personal marketing campaign and misplaced on election day.
When the 2 meet within the Oval Workplace on Wednesday, it is going to technically be the primary time since 1992 that an outgoing president will sit down with a brand new president he ran towards in a marketing campaign. On the time, Republican President George HW Bush met with Democrat and President-elect Invoice Clinton about two weeks after they met on Election Day.
Bush and Clinton mentioned coverage earlier than heading collectively to the Roosevelt Room to satisfy with their transition workers. Clinton later referred to as the assembly “nice” and stated Bush was “very useful.”
In latest a long time, such handover conferences between outgoing presidents and their successors have been alternately pleasant, tense and someplace in between.
This time, Biden vowed to make sure a clean transition and emphasised the significance of working with Trump, who’s each his presidential predecessor and successor, to carry the nation collectively. Biden’s White Home invitation to Trump additionally included his spouse, the previous and now new first woman, Melania Trump.
“I assured him that I might direct my total administration to work along with his crew,” Biden stated of the decision with Trump when he prolonged the invitation. The president-elect “seems ahead to the assembly,” spokesman Steven Cheung stated.
Jim Bendat, a historian and creator of “Democracy’s Massive Day: The Inauguration of Our President,” referred to as face-to-face conversations between outgoing and incoming presidents “wholesome for democracy.”
“I am glad to see that Democrats have chosen to take the excessive highway and return to the traditions that really make America nice,” Bendat stated.
This yr’s assembly is not going to be unfamiliar territory for Trump.
He and then-Democratic President Barack Obama held a longer-than-scheduled 90-minute Oval Workplace dialogue days after the 2016 election. White Home Chief of Workers Denis McDonough additionally confirmed Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner across the West Wing.
“We at the moment are going to do every part we are able to that will help you succeed. As a result of if you happen to succeed, the nation succeeds,” Obama advised Trump, though the newly elected president had solely simply began a victory that tarnished the outgoing president’s legacy.
Trump appeared nervous and was unusually subdued. He referred to as Obama “an excellent man” and the assembly “a terrific honor.” He stated he had “nice respect” for Obama and that they mentioned “many various conditions, some miraculous and a few troublesome.”
“I very a lot look ahead to interacting with the president, together with his counsel, sooner or later,” Trump stated. Obama White Home press secretary Josh Earnest described the assembly as “no less than barely much less awkward than some may need anticipated,” noting that the 2 “didn’t revisit their variations within the Oval Workplace.”
In truth, that assembly went easily sufficient to reassure some Trump critics that he might develop within the job and develop into extra presidential in temperament and motion — an evaluation that was rapidly undermined by Trump’s distinctive style for bombast and political conflicts as quickly as his reign started, particularly when it got here to his predecessor.
Solely about 4 months later, Trump accused Obama – with out proof – of getting his ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower earlier than the 2016 election. On social media, he blasted the previous president for partaking in “McCarthyism” and labeled it “Nixon/Watergate.” Unhealthy (or sick) man!”
Obama aides now say that though the 2016 assembly between Trump and Obama went nicely publicly, the brand new president’s crew ignored many of the feedback. transition course of and didn’t have the identical reverence for the White Home and federal establishments that they and Republican President George W. Bush’s crew had.
It was recalled that the one query Trump colleagues requested on the time was not concerning the upcoming workload or obligations, however about how greatest to seek out an condominium in Washington.
The official transition course of doesn’t require presidents to ask their successors to in-person conferences, though it could really feel that method.
“That is when the psychological transference takes place,” former Vice President Walter Mondale as soon as stated.
There aren’t any information that George Washington scheduled a proper assembly with the nation’s second president, John Adams, earlier than leaving the then-capital of New York. And Adams, after shifting to the White Home throughout his time period, by no means invited his political rival and successor, Thomas Jefferson, earlier than leaving with out attending Jefferson’s 1801 inauguration.
But in 1841, President Martin Van Buren hosted newly elected President William Henry Harrison – who had defeated him convincingly on Election Day – for dinner on the White Home. He later even provided to depart the official residence early to make method for his successor after Washington’s Nationwide Resort, the place Harrison had been staying, grew to become overcrowded. Harrison as a substitute made a brief pre-inaugural journey to Virginia.
Extra lately, Republican George W. Bush welcomed Obama to the White Home in 2008 after calling the election of the nation’s first black president a “triumph of the American story.”
And eight years earlier, Bush himself was the newcomer when he met the outgoing Clinton, who had denied his father a second time period. Their dialog came about simply eight days after the Supreme Courtroom determined the disputed 2000 election, and Bush additionally later went to the vice presidential residence to speak briefly with the person he defeated, Al Gore.
Bush and Gore didn’t say what they mentioned, though Vice Presidential Press Assistant Jim Kennedy described the dialog as supposed to “display that it is a nation the place we’re placing apart our variations after an extended and troublesome marketing campaign.”
Trump and Harris spoke by cellphone final week however haven’t scheduled an in-person assembly.
Biden’s invitation from the White Home to Trump continues a convention that Trump eschewed in 2020
World Information,Subsequent Massive Factor in Public Knowledg
