Jill Biden details frosty meeting with Melania Trump at husband Donald’s inauguration
Topics: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Politics, US News
Jen Thomas
Featured Image Credit: Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Topics: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Politics, US News
A Presidential inauguration is meant to be an exciting time, with the outgoing President and First Lady welcoming their replacements.
Jill Biden has revealed that when she and her husband, Joe Biden, greeted Donald and Melania Trump for their inauguration it turned out to be a decidedly frosty affair.
In her new memoir, A View from the East Wing, Dr Biden has shared what really went on at the event on January 20 2025.
It followed several high profile debates between Donald Trump and her husband, including one moment she described as 'scary' when she feared he was having a stroke.
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Biden revealed she even carefully picked an outfit to try and make the meeting with the Trumps go smoothly for the handover.
“The blue was an obvious political choice, but purple signified unity. I still believe in that,” she wrote.
When Donald and Melania Trump arrived at the White House, they exchanged the usual 'pleasantries' and took the 'obligatory picture' for the press before having tea together.
It is tradition for the two First Ladies to share a limousine to travel to the ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.
“I don’t know how long this has been tradition, but it certainly helps with the awkwardness,” Biden wrote, as they were accompanied by John Bessler, the husband of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who she joked 'must have drawn the shortest of all possible straws' in order to do it.
She added: “The presidents’ car was likely frosty too, but at least they’d spent considerable time in each other’s company, but this would be one of few interactions Melania and I had ever had.”
Biden said she believed “Melania blamed Joe personally for the FBI searching through her private spaces at Mar-a-Lago.”
“I have compassion for her, having been subject to the same kind of search. I knew how distressing it was to have agents rummage through your underwear drawer.
“Poor John had to figure out how to break the tension and find some path to relative peace in the course of that drive.”
Bessler asked Melania where her son, Barron Trump, was going to school, but Melania wasn't to be draw into conversation.
“NYU" was the simple answer, as “Melania kept trying to switch the topic to the weather,” Biden continued.
She added that she even 'tried to get with Melania’s weather-only program' by remarking about the military dogs being out in the cold weather.
It seems Donald Trump was more effusive, telling Biden: “If Joe ever needs anything, call me!"
The following days were tough for the former First Lady: “Those first days of what I began to call the afterlife were difficult, when we went into town, we saw big MAGA pickup parades. We had to turn the TV off because, when it was on, we saw that the new administration was undoing everything we’d fought for.”
“During the demolition of the East Wing… I received pictures of the destruction step by step from people in D.C.,” Biden wrote.
“I could barely look. The social offices, gutted. The military office, flattened. What had been my office, gone.
“A major landmark and historic treasure was being treated like a fixer-upper on HGTV’s Property Brothers. It wasn’t the loss of the blue-and-white striped drapes, the velvet sofa, the bookshelves filled with memorabilia that pained me – it was the symbolic bulldozing of history and the eradication of institutional memory.
“I kept thinking of everyone across the country that took pride in that building. I felt a sense of loss and grief with every blow from the wrecking ball. The innards of the East Wing were spread out for everyone to see, like a rare and precious animal that had been hunted down and killed.”
Donald Trump is currently in the middle of building a giant ring in the grounds of the White House for a forthcoming UFC match for his birthday.