Former President Donald Trump weighed in on the “nice note” he left for President Joe Biden when he departed office in 2021.
“You know, it’s interesting. He actually said it’s up to me to do and I actually think it’s up to him to do,” said Trump after “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker asked him to give “a little sense” of the letter.
“I think it was very – it was a nice note. I took a lot of time in thinking about it. I’d love him to do a great job even if it was very bad politically.”
The letter, part of a tradition of outgoing presidents leaving notes behind for their successor, is one that Biden described as “very generous” in 2021.
He stopped short of providing details about the letter at the time, adding that it was private and he wouldn’t talk about it until he spoke to Trump.
Trump, months after Biden’s inauguration, told Lisa Boothe that he wished Biden luck in a letter that came “from the heart.”
Biden, who reportedly found the Trump letter to be “shockingly gracious,” put the letter in his pocket and “didn’t share it with his advisers” after he found it in the Oval Office, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa wrote in their book “Peril.”
Jen Psaki, a former press secretary for the Biden White House, told Rob Lowe last year that the president took in the letter for himself after discovering it.
“And he is such a classy guy, whether people agree with his politics or not, that he didn’t even convey it to us in that moment of what the letter said,” Psaki said.
She continued: “It was long, it was very long. The script, from where I could see, was very lovely.”
The letters left behind by presidents head to the National Archives and are made available to the public.
