WASHINGTON — Three years, 9 months and 22 days after leaving the White Home in shame following his failed coup try, Donald Trump made his triumphant return on Wednesday.
“Welcome back,” President Joe Biden informed the previous and soon-be-be president initially of a virtually two-hour assembly within the Oval Workplace.
“Politics is tough. And it’s, many cases, not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today. And I appreciate it very much ― a transition that’s so smooth it’ll be as smooth as it can get,” stated Trump, who made historical past final week by turning into the primary convicted felon to win the presidency.
The White Home session was a marked distinction from 4 years earlier, when Trump refused to concede his election loss to Biden and by no means invited him to the White Home in what had been a practice for sitting presidents getting ready to go away workplace. As an alternative, beginning within the wee hours of election evening, Trump started mendacity {that a} second time period had been stolen from him via large voter fraud.
He continued with these claims even after the Electoral School voted on Dec. 14, 2020. Though Trump lastly relented and approved his government department staff to coordinate with Biden’s incoming workers, Trump continued plotting to overturn the election he had misplaced by 7 million votes.
He engineered the supply of fraudulent pro-Trump elector slates from key states to allow his vp, Mike Pence, to quote fraud and declare Trump the winner when he presided over the Jan. 6, 2021, congressional certification of the election. To stress Pence and Congress into going alongside, Trump assembled a mob of his supporters on that date and urged them to march on the Capitol to demand Pence do as Trump had commanded.
Pence refused to participate, although, and the ensuing violence that Trump incited injured 140 law enforcement officials and led to the deaths of 5.
Picture by Andrew Harnik/Getty Photographs
Trump had initially deliberate to take Air Pressure One to Scotland and ensconce himself at certainly one of his golf programs there by the point Biden took the oath of workplace.
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That plan was thwarted, although, when the first minister of Scotland knowledgeable him that due to the continuing COVID pandemic, he wouldn’t be welcome there.
Trump as a substitute left the White Home the morning of the inauguration, 12 days after saying he wouldn’t be attending. Marine 1 took him to Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland, the place he delivered a farewell speech to his supporters after which flew aboard Air Pressure 1 to West Palm Seashore, Florida. He was in his compound at his nation membership throughout the Intracoastal Waterway a half hour forward of Biden’s swearing-in on Jan. 20, 2021.
Previous to his assembly with Biden on Wednesday, Trump visited the Republican members of the Home at a close-by resort. There, he informed them: “I suspect I won’t be running again unless you say he’s so good we’ve got to figure something else out.”
The Home, by itself, wouldn’t be capable to let Trump run for and serve a 3rd time period. Altering the twenty second Modification to the Structure would require a two-thirds vote of each the Home and the Senate, after which want ratification by three-fourths of the 50 state legislatures.
