Donald Trump will make a triumphant return to the White House to meet President Joe Biden Wednesday, in the Republican’s first visit since departing under a torrent of scandal nearly four years ago.
Trump’s meeting with Biden comes as he moves swiftly to name his administration, including the world’s richest man Elon Musk as head of a new group aimed at slashing government spending.
Biden invited his sworn rival to meet in the Oval Office — despite the fact that 78-year-old Trump, who has consistently refused to admit his 2020 election loss, never afforded Biden the same courtesy.
Biden, 81, is expected to urge a smooth transition of power in the encounter at 11:00 am (1600 GMT) — and push for continued support for Ukraine.
“He believes in the norms. He believes in our institutions,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday when asked why Biden was inviting Trump.
“The American people deserve this. They deserve a peaceful transfer of power.”
However, in a break with protocol, Trump’s wife Melania “will not be attending today’s meeting at the White House,” her office said on X.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Biden would go over top foreign policy issues when he meets Trump — including US support for Ukraine against Russia, which Trump has indicated he will end.
The meeting may be a bitter pill to swallow for Biden, who branded Trump a threat to democracy.
The Republican leader of the House, Speaker Mike Johnson, said Trump may also visit the US Capitol, which a mob of his supporters stormed in 2021 to try to reverse his election loss.
Trump’s party looks set to take both chambers of Congress and consolidate his extraordinary comeback.
Tradition restored
Biden’s Oval Office invitation restores a presidential transition tradition that Trump tore up when he lost the 2020 election, refusing to sit down with Biden or even attend the inauguration.
Then-president Barack Obama had welcomed Trump to the White House when the tycoon won the 2016 election.
But by the time Trump took his last Marine One flight from the White House lawn on January 20, 2021, he had also been repudiated by many in his own party for having stoked the assault on the Capitol.
That period of disgrace soon evaporated, however, as Republicans returned to Trump’s side, recognizing his unique electoral power at the head of his right-wing movement.
Trump enters his second term with a near total grip on his party and the Democrats in disarray.
He has spent the week since the election at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida assembling his top team, as the world watches to see how closely he sticks to his pledges of isolationism, mass deportations and sweeping tariffs.
Trump named Space X, Tesla and X boss Musk, and another ally, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency (‘DOGE’)” — a tongue-in-cheek reference to an internet meme and cryptocurrency.
Musk’s out-sized influence within the Trump camp was underlined by multiple US media reports that the entrepreneur was accompanying the incoming president to his meetings with the Republican Party on Wednesday.
Trump is moving quickly to fill out his administration, picking a host of ultra-loyalists.
Trump nominated Fox News host and army veteran Pete Hegseth as his incoming defense secretary. An outspoken opponent of so-called “woke” ideology in the armed forces, Hegseth has little experience similar to managing the mammoth US military budget and bureaucracy.
Trump named South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem — an ally who famously wrote about shooting her dog because it did not respond to training — as head of the Department of Homeland Security.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio is tipped for secretary of state, US media reported, while Trump has also confirmed Congressman Mike Waltz, a former special forces officer, as his national security advisor.
John Ratcliffe, another figure who became prominent for defending Trump during his scandal-plagued first term, was named to head the CIA.
AFP
