Nearly four years after he left Washington DC under a cloud of ignominy rather than attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, presidentelect Donald Trump’s bespoke 757 touched down at Joint Base Andrews and taxied to nearly the exact spot from which he departed the same airfield aboard Air Force One.
This time, there was no red carpet there to meet him. There were no salutes rendered upon his arrival, and only a single air force officer waiting to greet the man who will, for the second time, become the commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military in just a few short months. Roughly 20 miles away at the White House, Trump wasn’t greeted by anything near the pageantry that will await him following his inauguration on 20 January, four years to the day after he left without welcoming Biden upon his arrival.
At the White House, without a single press camera there to witness his arrival at his former and future home, Trump entered the Oval Office, where he sat before a roaring fireplace across from a man who just weeks ago described him as an existential threat to the American republic.
When reporters were brought in to document the extraordinary occasion, Biden was surprisingly polite to a man who he’d spent the last five-plus years attacking and trying to remove from the American political scene. It was a calm, almost surreal scene, in its simplicity and pleasantry. Elsewhere in the White House, the message was clear – the circus is coming back.
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