Joe Biden (left) and Donald Trump.Photo: Alex Wong/Getty; SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty
New details are being shared about themuch-discussed but never-seen letterthat Donald Trump left for successorJoe Bidenwhen his time in the White House ended last year.
“The president [Trump] wrote a very generous letter,” Biden, 79, initially said when speaking to reporters in the Oval Office after being sworn in on Jan. 20, 2021. “Because it was private, I will not talk about it until I talk to him. But it was generous.”
Biden has not discussed the letter in any detail since. But White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did share a few new insights when she was a guest on theLiterally! with Rob Lowepodcast.
In the Feb. 17 episode, Psaki looked back at a moment that happened during her first day that she’ll remember “for a long time.”
“Before I did my first briefing, I was in the Oval Office, talking with him [President Biden] about the briefing and anything he wanted me to convey or what I expected and I said, ‘You know, I think you’re going to be asked about the letter that the former president left you,’ and he said, ‘Oh, did he leave me a letter?’ "
“[It was] just kind of a remarkable moment,” she said on Lowe’s podcast.
Noel Vasquez/Getty; Anna Moneymaker/Getty
Psaki also mentioned how Biden reacted to the letter as he read it.
“He is such a classy guy that he didn’t even convey it to us in that moment,” she said, “he kind of read the letter consumed it himself.”
Lowe then asked what she knew was on the letter, but Psaki said she had only limited information.
“It was long,” she said. “The script from where I could see was very lovely. But I don’t know what was in the letter, but yeah, that was one of my early memories.”
Though leaving a letter from one president to the next had become a tradition sinceRonald Reagan’s departure from the office in 1989, the news that Trump had left his own successor a letter was somewhat unexpected in light of the former president’s behavior in the months leading up to it, including his refusal before and since to accept that he lost the election to Biden.
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Trump spent months falsely claiming that the election was “rigged” against him and never publicly congratulated his rival, instead attempting to overthrow the results of the race in courts across the country and supporting a group of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol last year.
Trump also spoke publicly about the letter he left when he was a guest on the podcastThe Truth with Lisa Bootheback in March 2021.
“Basically, I wish him luck and, you know, it was a couple of pages long and it was from the heart because I want to see him do well. Look, he’s there,” Trump said of leaving the note,according toTheNew York Post.
source: people.com
