By Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden will host President-elect Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday for a meeting designed to demonstrate a smooth transition between administrations despite Trump’s team not yet having signed documents to start the handover process.
Biden, who initially ran against Trump in the 2024 election before stepping aside and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, will welcome the former and future president into the Oval Office, a traditional courtesy by outgoing presidents that Trump, a Republican, did not extend to Biden in 2020 when he won.
“He believes in the norms, he believes in our institution, he believes in the peaceful transfer of power,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Tuesday, on Biden’s decision to invite Trump. “That is what is the norm. That is what is supposed to happen.”
Biden and Trump have sharply criticized each other for years, and their respective teams hold vastly different positions on policies from climate change to Russia to trade. Biden, 81, has portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy, while Trump, 78, has portrayed Biden as incompetent.
Trump made false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Trump’s trip to Washington is expected to include a meeting with Republican lawmakers and House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson in the morning before the current and future presidents meet at 11 a.m. EST.
Although Biden intends to use the meeting to show continuity, the transition itself is partially stalled.
Trump’s team, which has already announced some members of the incoming president’s cabinet, has yet to sign agreements that would lead to office space and government equipment as well as access to government officials, facilities and information, according to the White House.
“The Trump-Vance transition lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act,” said Brian Vance, a spokesperson for the Trump transition, referring to the law that governs the transfer of power.
Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition, a non-profit that advises incoming administrations, said the agreement underscores that the United States only has one president at a time and includes pledges to sign ethics pacts not to profit off information provided in the transition.
“That needs to be signed for interaction to begin with federal agencies,” she said. “Everything is hinging on that.”
Meetings with federal agencies aside, Biden and Trump will likely discuss a myriad of topics, including foreign policy.
The outgoing president may urge Trump to back Ukraine in its war with Russia. U.S. support for Kyiv is in question following Trump’s victory over Harris last week, and Trump has pledged to end the war quickly without explaining how.
Jean-Pierre declined to outline discussion points between the two men ahead of their meeting.
The meeting will be the first since the two men’s debate in June. Biden’s poor performance then heightened concerns about his age among fellow Democrats and led to his departure from the race. Harris became the Democratic nominee instead, running a truncated campaign that ended in her loss.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; additional reporting by Heather Timmons, Richard Cowan and Steve Holland; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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