Biden says he’s spoken with all of his predecessors ‘with one exception’
President Joe Biden on Tuesday reflected on the “sense of history” he feels as a new resident of the White House and suggested he has spoken with his predecessors, but cited one notable exception.
Asked whether he has called any former presidents, Biden told CNN’s Anderson Cooper during a town hall in Milwaukee: “Yes, I have.”
He declined to say who he had spoken with, noting that they had “private conversations,” but then suggested he’d spoken with all of his living predecessors except, he implied, former President Donald Trump.
“By the way — all of them, with one exception, have picked up the phone and called me, as well,” he said, a clear allusion to Trump, without naming him.
Trump was the first president in modern history to decline to participate in the traditional meeting with his successor, and the Trumps did not host the Bidens at the White House for the customary inauguration day meeting or beforehand.
Trump did, however, leave Biden a letter in the Resolute Desk of the Oval Office, a tradition each Inauguration Day. Both parties have declined to comment on the letter’s contents, which Biden has only described as “very generous.”
Biden suggested that in the past, he has viewed presidencies through the lens of great American presidents in history, naming Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and George Washington, whom he described as “super human.”
But, he said, he feels more comfortable seeing himself in the league of the seven former presidents he has gotten to know personally.
“I had to remind myself that they’re really fine men that I knew well, the last seven presidents. And, at least, they’re people who I knew well enough to know that I play in the same team with. So it took away the sense of, this is — my God, you know — I’m not Abraham Lincoln, I’m not Franklin Roosevelt, how do I deal with these problems?” he said.
