Biden’s White House Invitation to Trump Continues a Tradition Trump Shunned in 2020

Before he comes back for good on Inauguration Day, Donald Trump will return to the White House briefly at the invitation of Democratic President Joe Biden, who had hoped to defeat his Republican predecessor a second time and reside there for four more years.

That may make for an awkward encounter, especially given that, after Biden ousted Trump in 2020, Trump offered no such White House invitation to Biden. Trump even left Washington before the Jan. 20, 2021, inauguration, becoming the first president to do so since Andrew Johnson skipped the 1869 swearing-in of Ulysses S. Grant.

Biden also has the unusual distinction of having beaten Trump in one cycle and run against him for about 15 months during this year’s campaign. As he sought reelection, Biden constantly decried Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s core values before leaving the race in July and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, who took on her own campaign and lost on Election Day.

When the two meet in the Oval Office on Wednesday, it’ll technically be the first time since 1992 that an outgoing president sits down with an incoming one he competed against in a campaign. Back then, Republican President George H.W. Bush met with Democrat and President-elect Bill Clinton about two weeks after they squared off on Election Day.

Bush and Clinton talked policy before going together to the Roosevelt Room to meet with their transition staff. Clinton later called the meeting "terrific" and said Bush was "very helpful."

Over the decades, such handoff meetings between outgoing presidents and their replacements have been by turns friendly, tense and somewhere in between.

This time, Biden has vowed to ensure a smooth transition and emphasized the importance of working with Trump, who is both his presidential predecessor and successor, to bring the country together. Biden’s White House invitation to Trump includes his wife, the former and now incoming first lady, Melania Trump.

"I assured him that I’d direct my entire administration to work with his team," Biden said of the call with Trump when he made the invitation. The president-elect "looks forward to the meeting," spokesman Steven Cheung said.

Jim Bendat, a historian and author of "Democracy’s Big Day: The Inauguration of Our President," called face-to-face chats between outgoing and incoming presidents "healthy for democracy."

"I’m pleased to see that the Democrats have chosen to take the high road and returned to the traditions that really do make America great," Bendat said.

President George H.W. Bush gestures toward President-elect Bill Clinton at the White House, Nov. 18, 1992, in Washington. (AP)

Trump has done this before

This year's meeting won't be uncharted territory for Trump.

He and then-Democratic President Barack Obama held a longer-than-scheduled 90-minute Oval Office discussion days after the 2016 election. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough also showed Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner around the West Wing.

"We now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed. Because, if you succeed, then the country succeeds," Obama told Trump, despite the president-elect being fresh off a victory that dented the outgoing president’s legacy.

Trump appeared nervous and was unusually subdued, calling Obama "a good man" and the meeting "a great honor." He said he had "great respect" for Obama and that they "discussed a lot of different situations, some wonderful and some difficulties."

"I very much look forward to dealing with the president in the future, including counsel," Trump said. Obama White House press secretary Josh Earnest described the meeting as "at least a little less awkward than some might have expected," and he noted that the two "did not relitigate their differences in the Oval Office."

In fact, that encounter went smoothly enough to reassure a few Trump critics that he might grow into the job and become more presidential in temperament and action — an assessment quickly subsumed by Trump’s unique relish of bombast and political conflict once his administration began, particularly when it came to his predecessor.

Only about four months later, Trump accused Obama – without evidence – of having his "wires tapped" in Trump Tower before the 2016 election. On social media, he blasted the former president for engaging in "McCarthyism" and decrying it as "Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

Obama aides now say that while the 2016 Trump-Obama meeting went well publicly, the incoming president's team ignored most of the transition process and did not have the same reverence for the White House and federal institutions that they or Republican President George W. Bush’s team had.

One recalled that the only question Trump counterparts asked at the time was not about the coming workload or responsibilities, but how best to find an apartment in Washington.

President-elect Obama and President Bush stand together on the West Wing Colonnade of the White House in Washington, Monday, Nov. 10, 2008. (AP)

A tradition, but not a requirement

The official transition process does not mandate that presidents invite their successors to face-to-face meetings, though it can feel that way.

"The psychological transfer occurs then," former Vice President Walter Mondale once said.

There's no record of George Washington scheduling a formal meeting with the nation's second president, John Adams, before leaving the then-capital city of New York. And Adams, after moving into the White House during his term, never invited his political rival and successor, Thomas Jefferson, over before leaving without attending Jefferson's inauguration in 1801.

Still, by 1841, President Martin Van Buren hosted President-elect William Henry Harrison — who had soundly beaten him on Election Day — for dinner at the White House. He even later offered to leave the official residence early to make room for his successor after Washington's National Hotel, where Harrison had been staying, became overcrowded. Harrison instead made a brief, preinaugural trip to Virginia.

More recently, Republican George W. Bush welcomed Obama to the White House in 2008 after calling the election of the nation's first Black president a "triumph of the American story."

And eight years prior, Bush himself was the newcomer when he met with the outgoing Clinton, who had denied his father a second term. Their chat came just eight days after the Supreme Court resolved the disputed 2000 election, and Bush also later headed to the vice presidential residence to briefly talk with the man he defeated, Al Gore.

Bush and Gore didn't say what they discussed, though vice presidential press aide Jim Kennedy described the conversation as meant to "demonstrate that this is a country where we put aside our differences after a long and difficult campaign."

Trump and Harris spoke by phone this past week but don't have a face-to-face meeting planned.

The 13-year civil war in Syria has roared back into prominence with a surprise opposition offensive on Aleppo, one of Syria's largest cities and an ancient business hub. The push is among the opposition’s strongest in years in a war whose destabilizing effects have rippled far beyond the country's borders.
It was the first opposition attack on Aleppo since 2016, when a brutal air campaign by Russian warplanes helped Syrian President Bashar Assad retake the northwestern city. Intervention by Russia, Iran and Iranian-allied Hezbollah and other groups has allowed Assad to remain in power, within the 70% of Syria under his control.
The surge in fighting has raised the prospect of another violent front reopening in the Middle East, at a time when US-backed Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both Iranian-allied groups.
Robert Ford, the last-serving US ambassador to Syria, pointed to months of Israeli strikes on Syrian and Hezbollah targets in the area, and to Israel’s ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon this week, as factors providing Syria’s opposition groups with the opportunity to advance.
Here's a look at some of the key aspects of the new fighting:
Why does the fighting at Aleppo matter? Assad has been at war with opposition forces seeking his overthrow for 13 years, a conflict that's killed an estimated half-million people. Some 6.8 million Syrians have fled the country, a refugee flow that helped change the political map in Europe by fueling anti-immigrant far-right movements.
The roughly 30% of the country not under Assad is controlled by a range of opposition forces and foreign troops. The US has about 900 troops in northeast Syria, far from Aleppo, to guard against a resurgence by the ISIS extremist group. Both the US and Israel conduct occasional strikes in Syria against government forces and Iran-allied militias. Türkiye has forces in Syria as well, and has influence with the broad alliance of opposition forces storming Aleppo.
Coming after years with few sizeable changes in territory between Syria's warring parties, the fighting “has the potential to be really quite, quite consequential and potentially game-changing,” if Syrian government forces prove unable to hold their ground, said Charles Lister, a longtime Syria analyst with the US-based Middle East Institute. Risks include if ISIS fighters see it as an opening, Lister said.
Ford said the fighting in Aleppo would become more broadly destabilizing if it drew Russia and Türkiye— each with its own interests to protect in Syria — into direct heavy fighting against each other. -
What do we know about the group leading the offensive on Aleppo? The US and UN have long designated the opposition force leading the attack at Aleppo — Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, known by its initials HTS — as a terrorist organization.
Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, emerged as the leader of al-Qaeda's Syria branch in 2011, in the first months of Syria's war. His fight was an unwelcome intervention to many in Syria's opposition, who hoped to keep the fight against Assad's brutal rule untainted by violent extremism.
Golani early on claimed responsibility for deadly bombings, pledged to attack Western forces and sent religious police to enforce modest dress by women.
Golani has sought to remake himself in recent years. He renounced his al-Qaeda ties in 2016. He's disbanded his religious police force, cracked down on extremist groups in his territory, and portrayed himself as a protector of other religions. That includes last year allowing the first Christian Mass in the city of Idlib in years.
What's the history of Aleppo in the war? At the crossroads of trade routes and empires for thousands of years, Aleppo is one of the centers of commerce and culture in the Middle East.
Aleppo was home to 2.3 million people before the war. Opposition forces seized the east side of the city in 2012, and it became the proudest symbol of the advance of armed opposition factions.
In 2016, government forces backed by Russian airstrikes laid siege to the city. Russian shells, missiles and crude barrel bombs — fuel canisters or other containers loaded with explosives and metal — methodically leveled neighborhoods. Starving and under siege, the opposition surrendered Aleppo that year.
The Russian military's entry was the turning point in the war, allowing Assad to stay on in the territory he held.
This year, Israeli airstrikes in Aleppo have hit Hezbollah weapons depots and Syrian forces, among other targets, according to an independent monitoring group. Israel rarely acknowledges strikes at Aleppo and other government-held areas of Syria.

Biden’s White House Invitation to Trump Continues a Tradition Trump Shunned in 2020