All smiles for Trump and Biden at the White House

President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump were all smiles at the White House on Wednesday as the two met to discuss efforts to transition to a new presidential administration. The duo appeared in front of reporters this afternoon as Biden emphatically shook Trump’s hand and congratulated him on his victory before promising a “smooth transition.“We’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated with what you need,” Biden said. “We’re going to get to talk about some of that today.”

“Thank you very much. Politics is tough and is in many cases not a very nice…

President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump were all smiles at the White House on Wednesday as the two met to discuss efforts to transition to a new presidential administration. The duo appeared in front of reporters this afternoon as Biden emphatically shook Trump’s hand and congratulated him on his victory before promising a “smooth transition.

“We’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated with what you need,” Biden said. “We’re going to get to talk about some of that today.”

“Thank you very much. Politics is tough and is in many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today,” Trump replied. “I very much appreciate it.”

The two presidents even appeared to share a laugh over the shouted questions and rambunctious behavior from the White House press corps as wranglers ushered them out of the Oval Office.

The gracious meeting comes just over two years after Biden described the 2022 midterm elections as a “battle for the soul of our nation” and slammed Trump and “extreme MAGA Republicans” as a threat to democracy and the “very foundations of our republic.” It’s only been five months since Trump handily defeated Biden in a presidential debate that led the Democratic Party to oust the president as their nominee over concerns about his age and cognitive ability.

Since then, Trump has publicly expressed sympathy for the way Biden was treated by his party — and Biden’s behavior was oft interpreted as signaling he did not want his apprentice and replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, to win the election. He gave a surprise press conference in the White House briefing room — the first of his presidency — during one of Harris’s big campaign rallies in which he asserted there was no daylight between them in the administration as she tried to distance herself from his unpopularity. He rejected her claims that Florida governor Ron DeSantis was politicizing his response to Hurricane Milton. He jokingly put on a MAGA hat at an event. And he helpfully called Trump supporters “garbage” a week out from the election, while Harris rallied on the Ellipse outside.

Wednesday’s White House visit did nothing to dispel the notion that Biden was secretly happy when Harris got routed by Trump — given the body language and facial expressions, it wouldn’t be hard to believe Trump and Biden were fast friends.

-Amber Duke

On our radar

SECURITY OF STATE President-elect Donald Trump announced that he will nominate Florida senator Marco Rubio to be his secretary of state, and former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence. He has also picked Florida congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general.

MOULTING DOWN The Salem Democratic City Committee of Massachusetts accused Representative Seth Moulton of being a “Nazi cooperator” for suggesting the party is too focused on transgender issues and promised to mount a primary challenge against him in his next re-election bid. Moulton ran uncontested in 2024.

STOP THE COUNT? Wisconsin Republican senatorial candidate Eric Hovde appears ready to demand a recount in his race against incumbent senator Tammy Baldwin, which current vote totals show he lost by nearly 30,000 ballots. Hovde raised questions about a 1 a.m. drop of about 100,000 ballots in Milwaukee, with Baldwin winning 90 percent of those votes and taking the lead.

McConnell gets his guy

The Senate GOP chose South Dakota senator John Thune to be its new leader on Wednesday amid intraparty squabbling over whether someone more loyal to President-elect Donald Trump and his agenda should take the helm ahead of the real-estate mogul’s second term in office. Thune will assume the top leadership position, taking over the spot held for seventeen years by Mitch McConnell, who is stepping aside at the age of eighty-two.

Thune is a McConnell acolyte and thus will likely lead as a political machinist, less interested in ideological ventures than in herding the caucus and maneuvering through backdoor deals and using Senate rules to the GOP’s advantage. Compare this to the pick of the conservatives, Florida senator Rick Scott, who claims to be committed to enacting Trump’s agenda but has questionable skills when it comes to leadership. Scott received public support from Senators Bill Hagerty, Marsha Blackburn, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Tommy Tuberville, but the vote was conducted via secret ballot, and Scott did not pass the first round of voting.

Thune and John Cornyn advanced to the final ballot, and Thune emerged the victor. Trump did not weigh in publicly on the proceedings, despite having a tense relationship with McConnell. Although McConnell kept a Supreme Court seat open for the Trump presidency, helped him confirm two additional justices and fast-tracked numerous other judicial appointments, Trump often accused him of sabotaging other parts of his policy agenda.

–Cockburn

CNN set for major cuts

The Biden economy is kicking some of its biggest cheerleaders while they’re down: reports indicate that CNN is poised to cut “hundreds of jobs” following Donald Trump’s convincing win last week.

For months, CNN’s head honcho Mark Thompson has wanted to trim the fat on the network, which appears to include both bloated contracts of top talent and lower-level staff. “Many of CNN’s own journalists, plenty of whom were blinded by Trump’s significant victory, have evinced similar naiveté about their own fates,” Puck reported.

The potential for mass layoffs at CNN follows a trend we’ve been covering here for well over a year: the first Trump administration saw massive growth in media consumption, with outlets like the Washington Post gobbling up subscribers on the daily as their staff dumpster dived for any rumor of Trump-related gossip.

That monetary success did not equate to journalistic success during President Biden’s time in office: too many journalists were eager to parrot the White House’s bizarre claims that videos of Biden stumbling and bumbling about were nothing more than “cheap fakes.”

On an individual level, a lot of journalists aren’t taking last week’s results well. Newsrooms like the Post and the Los Angeles Times saw minor revolts after their billionaire owners put the kibosh on planned endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Interestingly, the ownership of both the Post and the Times seem interested in a course correction. Over in Los Angeles, Pat Soon-Shiong, the paper’s owner, promised “a new editorial board” that will feature voices “from left to right to the center.

“Trust in media is critical for a strong democracy,” Soon-Shiong wrote, noting that the board’s burning desire to endorse Harris and its repeated endorsements of George Gascon, who lost his reelection bid for Los Angeles district attorney by about twenty points, shows how out of touch they are with the paper’s readership.