The peaceful transfer of power on Inauguration Day is not without the occasional awkwardness.
In her new memoir, “View from the East Wing,” Jill Biden recalled a car ride with Melania Trump from the White House to the Capitol for Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration.
It’s customary for the outgoing and incoming presidents to travel together in one car while their spouses ride in a separate vehicle. Jill Biden wrote that inauguration committee member John Bessler, who is married to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, “must have drawn the shortest of all possible straws” to be assigned to accompany the car carrying her and Melania Trump.
“The presidents’ car was likely frosty too, but at least they’d spent considerable time in each other’s company,” Jill Biden wrote in the memoir, released on June 2. “This would be one of few interactions Melania and I had ever had.”
‘Polite and controlled’
The two first ladies have met only a handful of times over the years.
When Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Donald Trump refused to concede and did not invite his successor for the traditional postelection meeting at the White House. Melania Trump followed suit and did not invite Jill Biden for the customary tea.
When Donald Trump won a second, non-consecutive term in 2024, the Bidens revived the White House tradition of extending an invitation to the incoming president and first lady. Donald Trump accepted, but Melania Trump declined, citing a prior commitment.
Jill Biden wrote that they had “met briefly” at the funerals of Rosalynn Carter in 2023 and Jimmy Carter in 2024, and that she’d called Melania Trump after Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“She was polite and controlled as ever,” Jill Biden wrote of her call with Melania Trump. “She said they were ‘good,’ and thanked me for calling.”
So when it came time to share a car on Inauguration Day, Jill Biden said she anticipated an awkward ride.
A tense trip to the Capitol
“Poor John had to figure out how to break the tension and find some path to relative peace in the course of that drive,” Jill Biden wrote of Bessler serving as their escort. “He’d always struck me as a quiet, reserved Midwestern guy, but as soon as we got in, he began chatting away, pelting us both with questions.”
Bessler asked about Barron Trump’s experience at New York University, where he’s matriculating. Jill Biden asked how Melania Trump’s father was doing since her mother’s passing.
Melania Trump, she wrote, “kept trying to switch the topic to the weather.”
“I tried to get with Melania’s weather-only program,” Jill Biden wrote. “I said I felt bad for the military dogs we passed along the route because of the cold.”
Shortly after Melania Trump answered that no, Barron Trump had never wanted a dog, the car finally arrived at the Capitol.
When reached by Business Insider, the Office of First Lady Melania Trump declined to comment.
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