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“Donald, congratulations,” Biden said, greeting Trump with a handshake and adding that he was “looking forward to a smooth transition.”
“Welcome back,” Biden added.
Trump made a similar promise and thanked Biden for the invitation — an invitation Trump himself did not extend to Biden after he lost the 2020 election.
– Thank you very much – Trump said.
“Politics is hard. And it’s not a very nice world in many cases. But it’s a nice world today and I appreciate it very much.”
Trump, who flew in from Florida, arrived at a military base near the Capitol to meet with billionaire Elon Musk for a morning meeting with House Republicans as Trump prepares for a potentially unified Republican administration and takeover.
Back in Washington, for the first time since his election victory, Trump told Republican lawmakers, “It’s nice to win.”
Trump received a standing ovation from House Republicans, many of whom filmed him on cellphones as he ran through their party’s victories up and down the ballot in what will be his final presidential election under constitutional restrictions.
“I guess I’m not going to run again unless you say he’s good, we’ve got to come up with something else,” Trump said to lawmakers’ laughter.
It’s a stunning return to the seat of US government for the former president, who left nearly four years ago as a weakened, politically defeated leader after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but is preparing to return to power with what he and his GOP allies and they see this as a mandate for management.
“He’s the comeback king,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said before Trump’s arrival.
– We owe him a great debt of gratitude.
The private meetings, including his conversation with Biden, brought great relief to the former president’s return. Trump’s re-emergence comes in the midst of Republican congressional elections, with the possibility of him leaving his mark on the outcome.
Trump supported Johnson’s return to the president’s office, and the president-elect said he was with Johnson all the way, according to a person familiar with the remarks but not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting.
Musk has been spending a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate, participating in discussions as the new Trump administration prepares to transition from Biden’s.
The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has been appointed by Trump to the post of adviser on government efficiency. Musk, some close to Trump and his team now see Musk as the second most influential figure in Trump’s immediate orbit, after Susie Wiles, the campaign manager who is Trump’s new chief of staff.
Johnson said Republicans are “ready to deliver on Trump’s America First agenda.”
After his 2016 election victory, Trump met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office and called it a “great honor.” But he soon returned to hurling insults at Obama, including accusing his predecessor — without evidence — of wiretapping him during the 2016 campaign.
Four years later, Trump contested his election loss to Biden, and continued to lie about widespread election fraud that never happened.
He did not invite Biden, then president-elect, to the White House and left Washington without attending Biden’s inauguration. It was the first time this had happened since Andrew Johnson skipped Ulysses S. Grant’s oath of office 155 years ago.
Biden insists he will do everything he can to ensure a smooth transition to the next Trump administration.
This is despite spending more than a year campaigning for re-election and denouncing Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s core values.
Ahead of the election, the president backed off his dire warnings about Trump, saying in a speech last week: “The American experiment lives on. We’re going to be fine.”
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Traditionally, as outgoing and incoming presidents meet in the West Wing, the first lady hosts her successor on the residence floor, but her office said Melania Trump was not in attendance, saying in a statement that “her husband’s return to the Oval Office is an encouraging start to the transition process and she wishes him every success.”
When Trump left Washington in 2021, even some top Republicans began to decry his role in helping to incite mobs of his supporters who staged a violent attack on the Capitol just weeks earlier, trying to stop the confirmation of Biden’s election victory.
But his victory in last week’s election completes a political comeback that has seen Trump once again become the undisputed boss of the GOP.
Wednesday’s trip was not the first time Trump has returned to the Capitol grounds since the end of his first term, however. Congressional Republicans hosted Trump over the summer as Trump reasserted his dominance of the party.
His latest visit comes as Republicans, who wrested the Senate majority from Democrats in last week’s election and are on the verge of retaining GOP control of the House, are in the middle of their own leadership election being held behind closed doors on Wednesday.
The president-elect’s arrival will provide another boost to Johnson, who has grown increasingly close to Trump as he works to retain his majority — and his own hammer business.
The spokesman said he expected to see Trump multiple times throughout the week, including at an event later that evening, and at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida “throughout the weekend.”
It’s unclear whether Trump will also visit the Senate, which is embroiled in a more divisive leadership election in a three-way race to replace outgoing GOP leader Mitch McConnell.
Trump allies are pushing GOP senators to vote for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who has been the front-runner challenging two other top Republicans, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, for the job.
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