President-elect Trump made his return to the White House on Wednesday, November 13, 2024, for a meeting with President Biden. Both men committed to a smooth transition of power in brief, combined comments.
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(Washington, DC) – President-elect Trump made his return to the White House today, meeting with President Biden ahead of the inauguration in January. It marked Trump’s first time in the Oval Office since his first term ended. On January 20, 2025, the nation’s 45th president will be sworn in as its 47th president.
The traditional meeting of the incoming and outgoing presidents didn’t happen in 2020 as Trump argued there was evidence of widespread voter fraud. Still, the peaceful transition of power within the executive branch place that January, as it has throughout US history. During combined public comments in the Oval Office, both Biden and Trump spoke about their commitment to that process and making it smooth. President Biden congratulated Trump, and the incoming president said while politics is often a nasty business, today things were “nice.”
While the interaction between Biden and Trump was cordial, at least publicly, incoming First Lady Melania Trump declined an invitation to join First Lady Jill Biden for tea. While Melania Trump’s publicist has said there was a conflict involving the book she recently published, the New York Post reports the former First Lady is angry over the raid of Mar-A-Lago. That raid, in the since-dismissed so-called classified documents case, was referred to as an invasion of privacy by Melania Trump. She and her son Barron Trump lived there at the time as their primary residence.
