Trump explicitly didn’t invite Biden to meet at the White House in 2020.
President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump will meet at the White House on Wednesday morning, officials announced on Saturday.
The two will meet in the Oval Office at 11 a.m. that day, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
The announcement comes four days after Trump was projected to win the presidential election, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the days following her loss, both Biden and Harris committed to a peaceful transfer of power.
At her concession speech at Howard University in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, the vice president told supporters, “Earlier today, I spoke with President-elect Trump and congratulated him on his victory. I also told him that we will help him and his team with their transition and that we will engage in a peaceful transfer of power.”
In a phone call with NBC News on Thursday, Trump praised Harris for her commitment to a smooth transition between administrations, saying that in a phone call, Harris “talked about transition, and she said she’d like it to be smooth as can be, which I agree with, of course.”
In a separate speech on Thursday, Biden echoed the same sentiment, telling reporters at the White House, “I will do my duty as president: I will fulfill my oath and I will honor the Constitution. On Jan. 20, we’ll have a peaceful transfer of power here in America.”
In 2020, following Trump’s loss to Biden, the previous Trump administration stonewalled the transition between administrations, spending weeks denying that Trump lost and fighting the Biden team’s efforts to begin transition work.
Only in early January, hours after a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol seeking to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory, did then-President Trump agree to an orderly and peaceful transfer of power.
Trump explicitly did not invite Biden to meet at the White House in 2020, forgoing a custom that Trump participated in with then-President Barack Obama in 2016.
