ANALYSIS — President Joe Biden and senior White House aides have pivoted from their dire warnings about fascism, talking up the same “norms” and “institutions” they warned would be destroyed if Donald Trump returned to power.
Seated in beige chairs Wednesday in the Oval Office — a fire raging behind them and portraits of former Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln hanging overhead — Biden shook Trump’s hand and uttered a deadpan, “Welcome. Welcome back.”
His top spokesperson later told reporters that Biden, despite his grave warnings about a new Trump term, “looked forward to the meeting,” which she dubbed “very cordial, very gracious, and substantive.” The same spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, even said Biden “is always going to, obviously, keep that line of communication open to the president-elect.”
