Politics always involves a measure of performance. And on that score, few moments rival the one on Wednesday morning at the White House, when President Biden and President-elect Donald J. Trump pretended in public to like and respect each other — for a total of 29 seconds.
They shook hands despite years of animus and recriminations. Mr. Trump has called Mr. Biden “crooked” and a “communist,” and has vowed to investigate his actions in office. Mr. Biden has said Mr. Trump is a “dictator” who tried to steal an election and would “sacrifice our democracy” in his pursuit of power.
On Wednesday, at least, the nation’s 46th president was determined to uphold the traditions that have long surrounded a peaceful transfer of power — offering to do “everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated, have what you need” — even if they were traditions that Mr. Trump refused to extend to him four years earlier.
Mr. Trump responded as they posed in front of a roaring fireplace in the Oval Office: “I appreciate very much a transition that’s so smooth, it’ll be as smooth as you can get.”
Up until less than two weeks ago, the president-elect regularly derided Mr. Biden as weak, infirm and demented. On Wednesday, he referred to the president merely as “Joe,” offering his appreciation for the gracious hospitality.
It was a remarkable half minute, followed by a closed-door meeting of the two men, along with their chiefs of staff, that lasted almost two hours. But beneath the public disguise, both men were dealing with starkly different realities.
For Mr. Trump, it was a heady, I-told-you-so moment of political resurrection after a defeat he had never really accepted. And for Mr. Biden and his staff, it was a grim, how-is-this-happening day that left them feeling defeated and in despair.
“Rough day,” one senior aide texted during the meeting, summing up the mood in the West Wing, where Mr. Trump’s new team will soon take over.
Encounters like these are always fraught with tension, placing two rivals next to each other trying to be civil after they had spent months tearing each other down. Herbert Hoover was angry that Franklin D. Roosevelt would not sign onto his approach to the Great Depression during the transition. Jimmy Carter was unimpressed that Ronald Reagan did not take notes during their post-election meeting.
Eight years ago, the stage was set for a similarly contentious meeting between President Barack Obama and Mr. Trump, then the president-elect.
Mr. Trump had spent years stoking the birther lie that Mr. Obama had been born outside the United States, which would make him ineligible to be president. Mr. Obama had mocked Mr. Trump mercilessly. When the two men greeted each other, they were surprisingly cordial. But the graciousness between the two men was a show, and did not last. Mr. Trump never sought Mr. Obama’s counsel and the four years of Mr. Trump’s presidency only deepened Mr. Obama’s animosity.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump might have been expected to bury the tradition of fake graciousness.
It was Mr. Trump, after all, who shrugged off the traditional meeting in 2020, consumed by his false denial of Mr. Biden’s victory. On Wednesday, the two men sat just feet from where Mr. Trump had watched the Capitol being ransacked by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. Congressional investigators later documented that he had done little to intervene or prevent the violence, watching it unfold for hours on the televisions he had installed.
When Mr. Biden was inaugurated 14 days later, Mr. Trump did not greet him at the White House, ride with him to the Capitol or take his seat on the stage. Instead, he flew on Marine One from the White House to a jet waiting to take him to his Florida estate.
For Mr. Biden, there was plenty of reason to return the favor as he sat next to the ultimate Washington bomb-thrower.
Yet the president is the ultimate institutionalist, having served in Washington for nearly a half-century. He had pitched his candidacy in 2020 as a return to the norms and principles of good behavior that had guided past presidents of both parties. It would have been out of character for Mr. Biden to act the way Mr. Trump had four years earlier — even if he wanted to.
Instead, his message to the president-elect was a simple one: “Welcome. Welcome back.”
Those final words by Mr. Biden were a subtle acknowledgment of his own failure to prevent what he had long said was a threat to the core of American democracy: a return to power by Mr. Trump. For his part, the president-elect made his own oblique reference to their differences.
“Thank you very much,” he said. “And politics is tough, and it’s in many cases, not a very nice world. But it is a nice world today and I appreciate very much a transition that’s so smooth, it’ll be as smooth as you can get. And I very much appreciate that, Joe.”
Mr. Biden responded: “You’re welcome.”
Following the meeting, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the discussion between the two men had been “cordial,” “gracious” and “substantive.” She said a number of topics had been discussed, including national security and domestic policy. She said Mr. Trump had come with a detailed set of questions for Mr. Biden.
She did not go into detail about the conversation, but said the president had come with his own list, including reminding Mr. Trump of things that remain on the congressional to-do list, including funding the government and passing relief for recent disasters.
After he left the White House, Mr. Trump called the New York Post to describe it. He said that “we got to know each other again” while discussing issues like the war in Ukraine.
“I wanted — I asked for his views and he gave them to me,” Mr. Trump said, according to The Post. “Also, we talked very much about the Middle East, likewise. I wanted to know his views on where we are and what what he thinks. And he gave them to me, he was very gracious.”
Before the White House meeting, Mr. Trump began his day in Washington in more obviously friendly territory: a gathering of Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Mr. Trump was received in a closed-door meeting near the Capitol by jubilant House Republicans, who gave him a standing ovation as he took the stage and delivered triumphant remarks centered around his own electoral victory.
Mr. Trump, 78, who is limited to two terms as president by the Constitution, said, “I suspect I won’t be running again.”
Then he joked: “Unless you say, ‘He’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out.’”
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