WASHINGTON: Joe Biden will meet with president-elect Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday after the US leader pledged an orderly transfer of power back to the Republican he beat in elections just four years ago.

Trump — who never conceded his 2020 loss — sealed a historic comeback to the presidency in the Nov 5 vote, cementing what is set to be more than a decade of US politics overshadowed by his hardline right-wing stance.

Biden will join the tiny club of US presidents to return power to their White House predecessor — with a previous instance coming when president Benjamin Harrison handed back to Grover Cleveland in the 19th century.

The Democrat will meet Trump at the Oval Office at 11am, the White House said on Saturday, with the clock ticking down to the ex-president’s return to power in January.

The 78-year-old ex-reality TV star won wider margins than before, despite a criminal conviction, two impeachments while in office and warnings from his former chief of staff that he is a “fascist.” Exit polls showed that voters’ top concern remained the economy and inflation that spiked under Biden in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

Biden, who dropped out of the race in July over concerns about his ability to continue at the age of 81, called Trump on Wednesday to congratulate him after his election win.

The Democratic leader urged Americans in a solemn televised address to “bring down the temperature,” in stark contrast to Trump’s refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat.

House control

Republicans appeared close to clinching control of the US House of Representatives, a critical element for president-elect Donald Trump to advance his agenda when he returns to the White House in January.

With votes still being counted from the general election, Republicans had won 212 seats in the 435-member House, according to projections by Edison Research, which projected on Friday night that Republican Jeff Hurd had enough votes to keep Republican control of Colorado’s congressional district.

Republicans now need to win six more seats to keep control of the House and they already have enough victories to wrest control of the US Senate from Democrats, though Edison Research projected late on Friday that Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen won re-election in Nevada.

With Trump’s victory in the presidential election and Republican control of the Senate already decided, keeping hold of the House would give Republicans sweeping powers to potentially ram through a broad agenda of tax and spending cuts, energy deregulation and border security controls. Results of 19 House races remain unclear, mostly in competitive districts in western states where the pace of vote counting is typically slower than in the rest of the country.

Ten of the seats are currently held by Republicans and nine by Democrats. Fourteen of the seats were widely seen as competitive ahead of the election.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2024