Kathrine Frich
Biden had no idea what to say next.
When fierce rivals finally sit down behind closed doors, the mood in the room can flip in an instant.
Out in public, politicians trade sharp insults for years on end to win over voters.
Once the cameras leave, however, even the bitterest enemies can suddenly sound like old pals.
A stunned silence
According to HuffPost journalist Kelby Vera, former President Joe Biden saw a surprisingly warm side of Donald Trump when the two men met alone inside the Oval Office just eight days after the 2024 election.
In an excerpt from his upcoming book, “Promise Me, America,” published by The Atlantic on Monday, the 46th president wrote that his successor’s friendly mood left him completely at a loss for words.
“Trump was immediately chatty and surprised me by adopting a tone so friendly that I thought he might be putting me on,” Biden wrote in the excerpt shared by The Atlantic. “It bordered on fawning.”
During the sit-down, Trump even floated an alternate world where the two rivals were close buddies. “You know, Joe, if it weren’t for politics, I believe we’d be good friends,” Trump told him, according to the memoir excerpt.
Biden had no idea what to say next. “I think I blinked, too stunned to respond,” he recalled, adding that his guest looked “intoxicated by the curious conversational path he had chosen.” Trump then doubled down on the idea: “Yes, if it weren’t for politics, we’d spend all our time golfing together.”
Sweet talk and insults
The warm words did not stop with golf plans. According to the book excerpt cited by HuffPost, Trump also hailed Biden’s record on creating jobs as “extraordinary” and claimed he was “relieved he didn’t have to run against me.”
Unsure what to make of the sudden charm offensive, the outgoing leader quickly steered the talk back to work. “I didn’t really understand why he was buttering me up, so I cut off his compliments to move on to the business at hand,” Biden wrote.
That private praise stands in sharp contrast to a decade of public attacks. As HuffPost pointed out, Trump has routinely mocked his rival with nicknames like “Sleepy Joe,” “Crooked Joe,” and “Crazy Joe,” while still pushing false claims that Biden and the Democratic Party rigged the 2020 race.
Since returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump and his top aides have also blamed Biden for high prices, border problems, and foreign policy headaches.
