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

WASHINGTON, Nov 10, 2024 (AFP) –  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.

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 causing “a great deal of excitement in all this.”

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.

Jockeying for jobs

Trump on Saturday ruled out re-appointing two senior figures from his first administration, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and UN ambassador Nikki Haley.

Pompeo had outlined a hawkish plan for Ukraine in July involving more weapons transfers and tough action against Russia’s energy sector which analysts noted on Saturday was at odds with other key Trump backers.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor, had challenged Trump for the Republican Party’s nomination earlier this year. “I very much appreciated working with them previously and would like to thank them for their service to our country,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Abrasive former ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell is seen as a frontrunner for the secretary of state position, as is Florida Senator Marco Rubio who called Trump a “con artist” and the “most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency” in 2016.

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.