Former President Joe Biden wished President Trump “all the best” in the next four years of his second administration.
Mr. Trump on Tuesday said Mr. Biden left him a “nice” letter in the Resolute Desk of the Oval Office and added he might make it public.
“Just basically, it was a little bit of an inspirational type letter, you know? ’Enjoy it, do a good job. Important, very important, how important the job is.’ But I may, I think it was a nice letter. I think I should let people see it, because it was a positive for him, in writing it. I appreciated the letter,” Mr. Trump told reporters.
He said the letter was in the desk with an underlined “47” written on it. He discovered it only after Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked him about it Monday as he was signing a flurry of executive orders.
“It could have been years before we found this thing. Wow, thank you,” the president said.
In the letter, made public by Fox News Wednesday, Mr. Biden wished Mr. Trump and his family “all the best in the next four years.”
“The American people — and people around the world — look to this house for steadiness in the inevitable storms of history, and my prayer is that the coming years will be a time of prosperity, peace and grace for our nation,” the letter said. “May God bless you and guide you as He has blessed and guided our beloved country since our founding.”
It’s a longstanding tradition for presidents to leave a letter for their successors, a tradition that even Mr. Trump kept in 2021 even after not accepting the election result of 2020.
Mark Updegrove, CEO of the LBJ Foundation, told The Associated Press that the latest letter is a “highly unusual situation, as so many things are in modern-day Washington with Donald John Trump.”
“This will mark the first time that a president who has received a letter from an outgoing president may well be writing a letter to the same person who’s the incoming president,” he said.
Former President Ronald Reagan started the tradition when he wrote a letter to his successor, George H.W. Bush, in 1989.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.