Former President Joe Biden is finally revealing the contents of a letter President Donald Trump left for him in the White House in 2021.
At the time, Trump refused the customary meeting between the incoming and outgoing presidents after setting loose a rabid mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
But what’s so surprising about the letter Trump wrote to Biden is not even so much what it says, but its soft, almost affectionate tone.
Biden published the letter in his new book “Promise Me, America,” and The New York Times was able to review it in a photocopy of the original letter.
Surprisingly, Trump never mentioned his vicious public attacks on Biden or his ongoing claims that someone had “stolen” the election from him.
Instead, he addressed the envelope to “46,” referring to Biden becoming the 46th president. He wrote about his experiences in the White House and how he knew Biden “will be true to yourself and the American people.”
“Many presidents have come and gone who simply governed as Republicans or Democrats,” Trump wrote. “Largely, they did not change history; they were just swept along in its relentless tide. This will not happen to you because I know how much you love the American people.”
Biden’s book will be released next Tuesday, Nov. 17. In it, The Times writes, Biden said it was “as if there were two Donald Trumps.” He wrote that Trump “deeply destabilized our democracy” and did not offer the traditional meeting.
“But here he was, offering his best wishes in warm language that sounded like it was coming from an old friend,” Biden wrote.
In the letter, Trump also wrote, “Your strength, your deepest reservoir of energy, comes from the knowledge that millions upon millions of people are depending on you. Their ambitions and aspirations are the reason you are here, with so many counting on your success.”
He even included, “May God bless you and Jill, and may God bless America!” before signing his name as “Donald.”
The White House responded in expected Trumpian fashion.
“Joe Biden should have heeded the president’s wise words, but instead he tried to destroy this country and weaponize the justice system against his political enemies,” a vitriolic White House Communications Director, Steven Cheung, told the Times.
“Biden is a disgrace, and America is better off with him no longer as president,” an angry Cheung added.
Social media erupted in disbelief that Trump could actually write such a warm and friendly letter to someone he spent months, if not years, viciously attacking.
Another joked, “He put it into ChatGPT to polish it.”
This commenter may have said it best. “That’s comedy, I never laughed so hard! No way those are the sentiments of an insurrectionist who refused to leave office!”
During the heated 2020 presidential campaign, Trump attacked Biden nonstop. He called him “the worst candidate” in history, suggested a Biden victory would cause violence across the country, accused him of corruption, and questioned his mental acuity, the Times reported.
Trump also refused to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, encouraged a mob to attack the Capitol and did not attend Biden’s inauguration.
He still claims Democrats stole and rigged the election. And two years into his second term in office, he still blames Biden for the missteps of his own administration.
In an excerpt from his memoir published in The Atlantic, Biden said Trump’s behavior during a 2024 meeting in the Oval Office “bordered on fawning.”
“You know, Joe, if it weren’t for politics, I believe we’d be good friends,” Trump told him, according to Biden.
“I think I blinked, too stunned to respond,” Biden wrote.
Apparently, in private and face-to-face with his political targets, Trump is a different person. That meeting, by the way, took place after Trump won the 2024 election and Biden hosted him for the traditional transition meeting, something Trump refused to do for Biden in 2020.
