WASHINGTON (AFP) – Donald Trump is making a triumphant with his return to the White House to meet United States (US) President Joe Biden, in the Republican’s first visit since departing amid a cloud of scandal nearly four years ago.
Trump’s meeting with Biden comes as he moves swiftly to name his top team, including the world’s richest man Elon Musk as head of a new group aimed at slashing government waste.
Democrat Biden invited his sworn rival to meet in the Oval Office – despite the fact that Trump, who has consistently refused to admit his 2020 election loss, never afforded Biden the same courtesy.
“He believes in the norms. He believes in our institutions,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday when asked why Biden was inviting Trump.
“The American people deserve this. They deserve a peaceful transfer of power.”
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Biden would go over top foreign policy issues when he meets Trump.
“The president will have the chance to explain to President Trump how he sees things, where they stand, and talk to President Trump about how President Trump is thinking,” Sullivan told CBS on Sunday.
But the meeting may be a bitter pill to swallow for Biden, who branded Trump a threat to democracy and was vying for the presidency against him until a disastrous debate performance forced the Democrat out of the race in July.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Trump may also visit the US Capitol – the building a mob of his supporters stormed in 2021 to try to reverse his election loss – but these plans have not been finalised.
Trump’s party looks set to take both chambers of Congress and consolidate his extraordinary comeback.
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 encouraged the Capitol riot.
The period of disgrace soon evaporated, however, as Republicans returned to Trump’s side, recognising his unique electoral power at the head of his right-wing movement.
Trump, 78, 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 stalwart ally, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency (‘DOGE’)” – a tongue-in-cheek reference to an internet meme and cryptocurrency.
In a flurry of announcements, Trump also picked Fox News host and military veteran Pete Hegseth as his incoming defense secretary. Hegseth has been an outspoken opponent of so-called “woke” ideology in the armed forces.
