Biden, Trump to meet at White House ahead of historic return

Joe Biden will meet with President-elect Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday after the US leader pledged an orderly transfer of power back to the Republican he beat in elections just four years ago.

Trump — who never conceded his 2020 loss — sealed a remarkable comeback to the presidency in the November 5 vote, cementing what is set to be more than a decade of US politics dominated by his hardline right-wing stance.

This type of meeting between the outgoing and incoming presidents was considered customary, but Trump did not invite Biden for one after making unsubstantiated election fraud claims that culminated in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

Trump also broke with precedent by skipping Biden’s inauguration, but the White House has said the Democratic president will attend the upcoming ceremony.

Biden’s meeting with Trump will take place in the Oval Office, the White House said Saturday, with the clock ticking down to the ex-president’s return to power.

Biden in January will join the tiny club of US presidents to return power to their White House predecessor — with the one previous instance coming when president Benjamin Harrison handed back to Grover Cleveland in the 19th century.

Trump, the 78-year-old ex-reality TV star, won wider margins than before, despite a criminal conviction, two impeachments while in office and warnings from his former chief of staff that he is a “fascist.”

Exit polls showed that voters’ top concerns remained the economy and inflation that spiked under Biden in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

The 81-year-old president, who dropped out of the White House race in July over concerns about his age, health and mental acuity, called Trump on Wednesday to congratulate him on the election win.

Trump 2.0

Democrats have been pointing fingers over who is to blame for the decisive loss of Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced Biden at the top of the ticket roughly 100 days before the election.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took aim at Biden, telling The New York Times that “had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race.”

“Because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different,” added Pelosi, who is reported to have played a key role in persuading Biden to step aside.

Pelosi noted that any review of the election should focus on the strengths of Harris, whom she praised for bringing hope to voters.

“She caused a great deal of excitement in all this,” Pelosi told the paper.

As the Democrats weigh what went wrong, Trump has begun to assemble his second administration by naming campaign manager Susie Wiles to serve as his White House chief of staff.

She is the first woman to be named to the high-profile role and the Republican’s first appointment to his incoming administration.

The other frontrunners for a place in the Trump 2.0 administration reflect the significant changes it is likely to implement.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading figure in the anti-vaccine movement for whom Trump has pledged a “big role” in health care, told NBC News on Wednesday that “I’m not going to take away anybody’s vaccines.”

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, could also be in line for a job auditing government waste after the right-wing SpaceX, Tesla and X boss enthusiastically backed Trump.

The president-elect announced Saturday that his inaugural committee will be led by close Trump associate Steve Witkoff and ex-senator Kelly Loeffler.