Now he's portrayed as an autopen West Wing Colonnade, but for a moment, President Donald Trump was extremely kind to former President Joe Biden.

In their new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan detailed what Trump told Biden when they met at the White House in 2024, directly after the election. 

Despite Trump not giving Biden the same courtesy when the Democrat won in 2020, because the Republican was and still is disputing the election, Biden hosted Trump at the White House on November 13.  

'We might not be doing this if you'd stayed in the race, Joe,' Trump told Biden, according to Haberman and Swan's account. 'You would've been a tougher opponent. They love you in Pennsylvania.' 

To his face, Trump touted Biden's presidency as a success, even commending his decision to financially assist Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion. 

'That's really hard,' Trump said, according to the book. 'You handled it well.'  

The incoming President didn't avoid hot-button issues, instead he brought them up with Biden. 

First, the Democrats pushing the 81-year-old out of the race after his disastrous debate performance against Trump. 

'You won fourteen million votes. And they took it away from you,' Trump said, according to the authors. 

That was the approximate number of votes Biden won during the 2024 Democratic primaries, in which he was not seriously contested.  

'But if he had hopes of goading Biden into an admission of bitterness about the brutal way he was forced out of the race - or perhaps into disparaging Vice President Kamala Harris, his replacement as the party's nominee - Trump would be disappointed,' Haberman and Swan wrote. 

Trump then brought up an even more fraught topic: Hunter Biden. 

'It's terrible what they've put your son through,' Trump told Biden, with the authors adding that he did so 'with apparent sincerity and not a word on his own role in savaging the younger Biden over the years.' 

'The incoming President assured Biden that he would not do anything to harm his son; and if there was anything that Hunter needed, to please let him know,' they added. 

Biden still pardoned Hunter a month later. 

The Democrat also had a very on-brand moment during the meeting, pausing to look at Trump's incoming White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. 

'Where did you get those beautiful blue eyes?' Biden asked Wiles. 

She replied, 'I don't know, because I didn't inherit them from either of my parents.' 

Wiles is the daughter of the late NFL great and sportscaster Pat Summerall, which prompted a 'spirited discussion about the Giants and the value of good genes concluded the meeting.' 

'The scene was so congenial as to be disorienting,' Haberman and Swan wrote. 

The authors said that Biden found Trump's warmth 'disarming.'  

'Trump's sudden graciousness seemed authentic at the time, even to some close aides, but it was also a characteristic move,' they wrote. 'He had a long history of dramatically changing his tone whenever he believed a different chord could exploit a situation.'

In this instance, Biden helped legitimize his second term. 

It was reminiscent, the authors wrote, to a phone conversation that Trump had with former President Bill Clinton 'the husband of the woman he had threatened to imprison,' after the 2016 election. 

The conversation was 'cordial' as if 'nothing had happened.' 

Several weeks later, Trump also called Biden to wish him a happy Thanksgiving. 

In Jonathan Karl's 2025 book Retribution, Karl wrote that Trump was extremely cordial to Biden at inauguration as well. 

'Politics brings out the worst in people,' Trump said. He then added, 'We'd be great friends if it weren't for politics. We'd be great friends, Joe.' 

But as soon as Trump took office, he took aim at Biden - and has done so nearly every day since. 

'In the weeks ahead, Biden would look back at the brief display of civility in the Oval Office and feel hoodwinked,' Haberman and Swan wrote. 'As Trump's old patterns resumed, Biden sank into disbelief and dejection as he and his administration soon found themselves subject again to Trump's daily abuse.'