US elections 2024. Joe Biden and Donald Trump – meeting at the White House. No meeting between Melania Trump and Jill Biden

President Joe Biden during the meeting with Donald Trump he said he hopes for a “smooth transfer” of power, which will formally take place in January. “Mr. President-elect, former President Donald, congratulations,” Biden said to Trump as the two sat down for a conversation in the Oval Office. “Welcome back,” added the current host of the White House, and the two shook hands.

Trump replied: – Politics is brutal in many cases, the world is not very nice in many cases, but today it is nice.

He also thanked Biden for the welcome and also expressed hope that the transfer of power would be “as smooth as possible.”

The two shook hands, smiling, but not answering the journalists' shouted questions.

The American correspondent of “Fakty” TVN, Marcin Wrona, said that the meeting lasted about two hours. It started shortly after 5 p.m. Polish time and ended around 7 p.m. A moment before the start of the meeting, the journalist said that he did not remember the last time there were such “crowds of journalists” in front of the White House.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said at a later briefing that the conversation between Biden and Trump was “very cordial, very polite and substantive.” She said the leaders discussed “a number of important national security and domestic policy issues facing the country and the world,” and Trump came with “a whole list of detailed questions.” It was also among the topics war in Ukraineand Biden persuaded Trump to maintain support for Ukraine and the importance of the conflict for security in Europe and in the world.

The meeting, which lasted two hours, included both presidents as well as current White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and his successor, Susie Wiles.

When asked whether Biden had apologized to Trump for calling him a threat to democracy during the campaign, Jean-Pierre denied it and suggested that the president had not changed his views and had invited Trump to demonstrate his attachment to democracy. – What we see now is one of the principles of democracy. We are talking about a peaceful transfer of power, the spokeswoman noted. She also stated that Biden did not reproach Trump for not inviting him to the White House after his victory and for not acknowledging his defeat in the election. – We want to move forward. We respect the will of the people, she added.

Even before the meeting, Marcin Wrona reminded that the sitting president receiving his successor in the White House is a long-standing tradition that was broken four years ago, when Trump did not receive Biden. This is the first meeting of both politicians since June, when their debate took place in Atlanta, which – according to the unanimous opinion of experts – was a failure for Biden, and a few weeks later he decided not to run for president.

She did not appear at the White House on Wednesday Melania Trump and therefore she did not meet the current first lady Jill Biden. – Melania Trump reportedly still has a grudge about the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago (Trump's estate in Florida – ed.). She and Donald Trump believe that Joe Biden and his administration were behind this search, the American correspondent explained on TVN24. Such a search took place in August 2022and the American media wrote at the time that the agents were looking for documents, including secret ones, that Donald Trump, contrary to the regulations, was supposed to take with him from the White House to Florida after he ceased to be president at the beginning of 2021.

One White House official, quoted by CNN, reported that Jill Biden gave Trump a handwritten letter of congratulations to Melania Trump during the meeting, in which she also expressed her team's readiness to help in the transition of power.

Before the meeting at the White House, Trump met with representatives of the House of Representatives at the Hyatt hotel in Washington. He emphasized the historic nature of his electoral victory, claiming that it was the most important election in 129 years. He said Republicans would win in liberal strongholds like New York and California in the next election.

He also speculated that although the results of the elections to the House of Representatives have not yet been decided, Republicans will have a majority of four or five votes in the 438-seat chamber.

Trump's visit to Washington coincides with the election of the party's new leadership in Congress on Wednesday. The president-elect supported the current speaker, Mike Johnson, but did not comment on the competition for the new majority leader in the Senate. According to the New York Times, during Wednesday's caucus meeting, Johnson assured anti-Ukraine Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene that Congress would not pass more money to support Ukraine.

In recent days, Trump has been presenting subsequent members of his future presidential administration, which will formally take power in January 2025. He announced, among other things, that he would appoint “department of government efficiency” (DOGE) led by Elon Musk and his former rival, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. The task of the new advisory body is to “dismantle bureaucracy” and cut expenses.

Trump also named John Ratcliffe as his new chief CIAand Steve Witkoff as envoy for the Middle East. Former veteran wars in Afghanistan and Iraqa presenter known from Fox News programs Pete Hegseth, is to be the next head of the Pentagon.

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