WASHINGTON – President Biden will keep the letter that former President Donald Trump left for him in the Oval Office confidential, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday.
Biden also has no plans to call her predecessor to thank him for the message, she revealed.
Trump left a note for Biden on his last day as commander-in-chief, maintaining a decades-old tradition that Ronald Regan started in 1989 when he left a message at the Resolute Desk to George HW Bush saying he was praying for his success.
“There are no calls to report and I have no update on the letter,” Psaki told reporters in the meeting room on Friday morning.
“As I said, when we were talking about it for about a week and a half, it seems more than that, I will thank you, the President naturally found the letter gracious and generous, but he intends to keep it private,” she said.
Last week, Biden confirmed that he received the letter from Trump, but declined to say what he was saying.
“The president wrote a very generous letter. Because it was private, I’m going – I’m not going to talk about it until I talk to him. But it was generous, ”Biden told reporters.
The note was the only transfer between the two commanders in chief after Trump decided not to attend Biden’s inauguration – breaking 152 years of tradition.
The last time the two spoke is believed to have been in their final presidential debate on October 22 in Nashville, Tenn.
In 2016, Barack Obama left a letter to Trump after his victory over Hillary Clinton who congratulated him “for a remarkable race”.
Trump said he would “appreciate” the “beautiful” letter and called his predecessor to thank him.
“It was long. It was complex. It was thoughtful, ”Trump told ABC News a week after his inauguration. “And it took a while to do that, and I enjoyed that.”
