‘Welcome home’, Biden tells Trump during White House visit

Washington: Outgoing President Joe Biden welcomed President-elect Donald Trump to the White House on Monday morning for a traditional tea ceremony with two words: “Welcome home”, according to media reports.

Biden and first lady Jill Biden received President-elect Trump and Melania Trump for a brief ceremony after which they would leave together for the US Capitol where the incoming President will be administered the oath of office by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Guests for the swearing-in had begun arriving at the Capitol Rotunda where the ceremony will take place; indoors instead of the traditional venue outside. This will only be the second instance of the swearing-in taking place indoors; the last time was in 1985 when President Ronald Reagan took the oath for his second term.

Trump’s return to the White House is also only the second time for an American President to serve two non-consecutive terms. The first was Grover Cleveland at the end of the 19th century.

The swearing-in will be attended by Trump’s nominees to the cabinet such as Marco Rubio, for secretary of state, who is expected to be the first to be confirmed, as early as Monday.

President-elect Trump started Monday’s inauguration proceedings by attending a private service at St John’s Church with the incoming first lady Melania Trump, Vice-President-elect JD Vance and wife Usha Vance and some members of the cabinet.

No TV cameras were allowed inside but the Trump inauguration team released pictures from inside that showed other attendees including Trump’s sons Barron Trump, Don Trump Jr, Eric Trump and his wife Lara Trump, Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.

Also among Trump’s guests were Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla and Space X’s Elon Musk, and Google’s Sundar Pichai. They would go on to also attend the swearing-in ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda.

Former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton, former President George W Bush and his wife Laura Bush, and former President Barack Obama minus his wife Michelle Obama will attend the oath-taking ceremony as is the tradition, which was broken by President Trump who skipped Biden’s inauguration in 2021.

As the ceremonies and partying continues into the evening and night, Trump’s aides were working on a spate of executive orders implementing some of the President-elect election promises, including immigration. The President-elect told guests at a dinner on Sunday night that there are close to 100 such orders. Ten of them will be about immigration and among others one will rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.