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作成日: 2024/11/14 12:17

更新日: 2025/12/08 08:53

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‘Welcome back': Biden offers Trump the smooth transition he never got as president-elect returns to the White House
By Kevin Liptak, CNN

President Joe Biden meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on November 13., Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
The last time Donald Trump was in the Oval Office, he scrawled out a two-page letter to Joe Biden in his distinctive jagged penmanship, slipped it into the drawer of the Resolute Desk and - notwithstanding the note's surprisingly gracious tone - walked away from the building defeated and bitter.

He returned to the White House on Wednesday for a meeting with Biden in vastly altered circumstances, emboldened by a likely popular vote victory in last week's election and basking in his return to power.

As a fire crackled behind the two presidents in the Oval Office, Biden congratulated Trump for his victory, betraying no glimpse of the bitterness that must have been weighing on Biden's mind at that moment.

"Congratulations," Biden told his predecessor and successor – a man who Biden has long said represents a clear danger to democracy itself.

"I'm looking forward to having, like we said, a smooth transition," Biden said, making a promise that was never extended to him after he took Trump's seat four years ago.

"Welcome back," Biden added.

After the two men shook hands, Trump said that while "politics is tough," it's "a nice world today." He echoed Biden's hopes for "a transition that is so smooth that it will be as smooth as it can get." The two leaders appeared to joke to each other about the ensuing caucophony of questions shouted at them by reporters in the room, but neither responded.

The awkwardness can't be denied. The last time Biden mentioned Trump before the election, he described him during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania as someone "you'd like to smack in the a**." As a candidate and later as a (barely used) surrogate for Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden cast Trump as nothing less than a threat to democracy itself.

Over the course of his presidency, Biden would sometimes grow irritated at reminders of the man who'd moved out. "What an a**hole," he's told visitors upon seeing the $50,000 golf simulator Trump installed in the White House residence.

Yet for at least a morning, Biden will put those feelings aside, the imperative of a smooth transition overriding any personal animus. Despite the rancor expressed on the stump by both Biden and Trump toward the other, the tenor of Wednesday's meeting is expected to remain professional.

"Everyone is going to be polite," one senior administration official told CNN.

A brief call Wednesday between Biden and Trump after the former president's victory was described as "very friendly," with Biden aides expressing surprise at Trump's approach of deference and flattery.

"I assured him that I'd direct my entire administration to work with his team," Biden said after phoning Trump last week.

A long way from 2021
It's a favor Trump never afforded Biden when their circumstances were reversed. He never conceded the election, never placed a phone call, never invited Biden for lunch.

He left Washington before Biden was sworn in, using Air Force One one last time to escape to Palm Beach, Florida. It was the first time a sitting president skipped his successor's swearing-in since 1869.

In this January 20, 2021, photo, then-President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. - Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images
Those were dark days for Trump. He was barely seen in public, his schedule empty except for the notice he dictated himself asserting he'd "work from early in the morning until late in the evening" and "make many calls and have many meetings."

Moving trucks were arriving to the White House to collect the Trumps' belongings. Workers hung bunting that read "2021 Biden-Harris Inauguration" from temporary stands across from the White House North Portico, visible from his third-story residence.

Inside, Trump had become consumed by the unraveling of his presidency, surrounded by a shrinking circle of associates, many of them decades younger. Old friends who once spoke with him regularly said they could no longer reach him - both literally, because he was refusing their calls, and figuratively, because those who were patched through described a man lost in denial and detached from reality.

To some aides, Trump suggested he might not leave the building at all, claiming the election had been stolen from him. When reality set in that he would, in fact, need to depart the White House, his focus turned to the military-style sendoff at Joint Base Andrews on the morning of Inauguration Day. But finding supporters to attend turned into an ordeal, and in the end, only about 300 people showed up.

"We will be back in some form," Trump told the modest crowd of supporters who gathered to see him off. "So have a good life. We will see you soon."

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