OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President-elect Donald Trump has revealed what he and President Joe Biden discussed after their public meet-and-greet at the White House on Wednesday.
Trump told the New York Post exclusively that he and Biden “both really enjoyed seeing each other” following an often-rancorous campaign during which the two men traded barbs and insults.
“You know, it’s been a long, it’s been a long slog,” Trump said during a phone interview as he left Washington. “It’s been a lot of work on both sides and he did a very good job with respect to campaigning and everything else. We really had a really good meeting.”
The last two U.S. presidents discussed the transition of power on January 20, with Trump telling Biden in front of the world’s press that it would be “as smooth as can be.”
“It’s going very smoothly,” Trump told The Post regarding the process of picking officials for his incoming administration. He added that the transition team and the Biden White House enjoy a “very, very good relationship.”
Trump also said that he Bident talked about the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East between Israel and Hamas.
“I wanted — I asked for his views and he gave them to me,” Trump told The Post. “Also, we talked very much about the Middle East, likewise. I wanted to know his views on where we are and what he thinks. And he gave them to me, he was very gracious.”
Trump also shared that he and Biden are scheduled to meet again just before his inauguration, which the Democratic incumbent has already confirmed he will attend.
“The Oval Office is so beautiful and I do certainly look forward [to coming back],” Trump told The Post. “We’ll have that very, very nice meeting that takes place between two presidents sometime prior. You know, that takes place just prior to going in. So we’ll have that. But this was a very enjoyable meeting.”
The executive editor of the National Review penned a column last week, a day after Trump’s resounding victory, calling on Biden to invite him to the White House and prepare a pardon for his successor.
While Biden did invite Trump, it’s not clear whether a pardon is forthcoming.
“Biden should … move to use his constitutional authority to pardon Donald Trump of all pending federal charges, and relieve special counsel Jack Smith of his duties,” Mark Antonio Wright noted. “He should then ask New York governor Kathy Hochul to use her authority to pardon Trump for the crimes he was convicted of in New York State.”
While going on to claim that Trump is at least partially responsible for the crimes he’s been either charged with or convicted of, Wright noted that Trump’s Electoral College and national majority victories are “a definitive verdict on the subject delivered by the highest authority: the people.”
“Wise or not, a majority of the public chose to reelect Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. He deserves to enter that term in January 2025 with the slate wiped clean of the controversies of the previous era,” Wright noted.
“No good at all will come of an American president fulfilling his constitutional duties at home and abroad under the cloud of pending criminal prosecutions. No good whatsoever will come of Trump himself ordering the Justice Department to drop the charges or by crossing the Rubicon in American life of ‘self-pardoning,’” he added.
“Joe Biden has not often spent his time in office acting much like a statesman. But a pardon now of Donald Trump would be statesmanlike. And such an act would go a long way toward ending the cycle of lawfare that, if left unchecked, will cause more harm and more damage to the body politic. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon is the precedent here, and it’s a good one,” Wright said.
