WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump is making a victor’s return to Washington.
The president-elect’s plane landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Wednesday morning. President Joe Biden — both Trump’s successor and predecessor to the presidency — will welcome him to the White House for an Oval Office visit. It’s a traditional part of the peaceful handoff of power — a ritual that Trump himself declined to participate in four years ago.
Trump also planned to meet with congressional Republicans as they focus on his Day 1 priorities and prepare for a potentially unified government with a GOP sweep of power in the nation’s capital. His visit, amid Republican congressional leadership elections, could put his imprint on the outcome.
“I expect him to give a great message today, more like a locker room speech getting everybody ready for what’s coming in January,” Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” The new Congress will be sworn-in about two weeks before Trump takes office on Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, 2025.
In an unusual move, Trump was being accompanied on the trip by billionaire Elon Musk. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who was named by Trump on Tuesday to a government efficiency advisory role, is not currently expected to attend the White House sit-down, but will join Trump’s meeting with House Republicans before that.
Musk has been spending much of his time at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate, and participating in transition meetings. Some close to Trump and his team now see the billionaire as the second most influential figure in Trump’s immediate orbit, after Susie Wiles, the campaign manager who is Trump’s incoming chief of staff.
For Trump, it’s a stunning return to the U.S. seat of government after he departed nearly four years ago a diminished, politically defeated leader after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol but is preparing to come back to power with what he and his GOP allies see as a mandate for governance.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said that Republicans are “ready to deliver” on Trump’s “America First” agenda.
After his election win in 2016, Trump met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office and called it “a great honor.” But he soon was back to heaping insults on Obama, including accusing his predecessor — without evidence — of having wire-tapped him during the 2016 campaign.
Four years later, Trump disputed his 2020 election loss to Biden, and he has continued to lie about widespread voter fraud that did not occur. He didn’t invite Biden, then the president-elect, to the White House and he left Washington without attending Biden’s inauguration. It was the first time that had happened since Andrew Johnson skipped Ulysses S. Grant’s swearing-in 155 years ago.
Biden insists that he’ll do everything he can to make the transition to the next Trump administration go smoothly. That’s despite having spent more than a year campaigning for reelection and decrying Trump as a threat to democracy and the nation’s core values. Biden then bowed out of the race in July and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him.
In the wake of the election, the president has abandoned his dire warnings about Trump, saying in a speech last week, “The American experiment endures. We’re going to be okay.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is committed to “making sure that this transition is effective, efficient and he’s doing that because it is the norm, yes, but also the right thing to do for the American people.”
“We want this to go well,” Jean-Pierre added. “We want this to be a process that gets the job done.”
Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan echoed that sentiment, saying the administration will uphold the “responsible handoff from one president to the next, which is in the best tradition of our country.”
Wednesday’s visit is more than just a courtesy call.
“They will go through the top issues — both domestic and foreign policy issues — including what is happening in Europe and Asia and the Middle East,” Sullivan told CBS of Wednesday’s meeting. “And the president will have the chance to explain to President Trump how he sees things … and talk to President Trump about how President Trump is thinking about taking on these issues when he takes office.”
Traditionally, as the outgoing and incoming presidents meet in the West Wing, the first lady hosts her successor upstairs in the residence, But her office said Melania Trump wasn’t attending, saying in a statement that “her husband’s return to the Oval Office to commence the transition process is encouraging, and she wishes him great success.”
After his 2016 meeting with Obama, Trump also visited lawmakers on Capitol Hill and will be doing the same Wednesday — not far from where a mob of his supporters staged a violent January 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol to try and stop the certification of Biden’s election victory.
When Trump left Washington in 2021, even some top Republicans had begun to decry him for his role in helping incite the Capitol attack. But his win in last week’s election completes a political comeback that has seen Trump once again become the unchallenged head of the GOP.
It’s not the first time Trump has returned to the Capitol area since the end of his first term, though. Congressional Republicans hosted Trump over the summer, as Trump was again solidifying his dominance over the party.
His latest visit comes as Republicans, who wrested the Senate majority from Democrats in last week’s elections and are on the cusp of keeping GOP control of the House, are in the midst of their own leadership elections happening behind closed doors Wednesday.
The president-elect’s arrival will provide another boost to Johnson, who has pulled ever-closer to Trump as he worked to keep his majority — and his own job with the gavel.
The speaker said he expects to see Trump repeatedly throughout the week, including at an event later that evening, and at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida “all weekend.”
It’s unclear whether Trump will also visit the Senate, which is entangled in a more divisive closed-door leadership election in the three-way race to replace outgoing GOP Leader Mitch McConnell.
Trump’s allies are pushing GOP senators to vote for Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who had been a longshot candidate challenging two more senior Republicans, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, for the job.
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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Darelene Superville and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
