Former first lady Jill Biden has described a frosty encounter with her successor Melania Trump at President Donald Trump’s inauguration, in her newly released memoir.
In the penultimate chapter of A View from the East Wing, Dr Biden details the moments before the handover between her husband Joe and his successor on January 20, 2025 after months of ill-tempered clashes on the campaign trail.
Describing a bitterly cold winter’s day, the Democrat explained how even her choice of outfit was made with a view to appeasement with the Trumps.
“The blue was an obvious political choice, but purple signified unity. I still believe in that,” she wrote, after deciding between two Ralph Lauren suits for the ceremony.
But despite the apparent effort, the meeting between the two couples appears to have been particularly awkward.
When the Trumps arrived on the steps of the White House in their motorcade, the Bidens exchanged “pleasantries” with their replacements and posed for the “obligatory picture” before retiring inside for tea, Biden explained.
The customary limousine ride taking the two first ladies to the ceremony at the U.S. Capitol then followed, accompanied by a member of the inauguration committee.
“I don’t know how long this has been tradition, but it certainly helps with the awkwardness,” Biden wrote, adding that John Bessler, the husband of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, “must have drawn the shortest of all possible straws” when he was asked to do it.
“The presidents’ car was likely frosty too, but at least they’d spent considerable time in each other’s company,” the author observed. “This would be one of few interactions Melania and I had ever had.”
Biden suggested the reason for the icy atmosphere was that “Melania blamed Joe personally for the FBI searching through her private spaces at Mar-a-Lago.”
“I have compassion for her, having been subject to the same kind of search,” Biden wrote. “I knew how distressing it was to have agents rummage through your underwear drawer.
“Poor John had to figure out how to break the tension and find some path to relative peace in the course of that drive.”
In one attempt at thawing the ice, Bessler asked Melania where her son Barron Trump was going to school but Biden said he received only the briefest of replies.
“‘NYU’, Melania said, looking out the window, clearly about to point to the clouds as a a way of segueing to a neutral topic.
“Melania kept trying to switch the topic to the weather,” Biden continued, saying that she “tried to get with Melania’s weather-only program” by expressing sympathy for the military dogs braving the elements as part of the day’s pomp and ceremony.
After arriving at the Capitol and observing the ceremony, Biden recalls the new president telling her: “If Joe ever needs anything, call me!”
The Bidens later departed for Joint Base Andrews in Maryland by helicopter, from where they flew out to Santa Ynez, California, to stay with friends away from the media spotlight.
“Those first days of what I began to call the afterlife were difficult,” Biden said. “When we went into town, we saw big MAGA pickup parades. We had to turn the TV off because, when it was on, we saw that the new administration was undoing everything we’d fought for.”
Later in the book, she described her shocked reaction to Trump’s sudden makeover of the White House.
“During the demolition of the East Wing… I received pictures of the destruction step by step from people in D.C.,” Biden wrote. “I could barely look. The social offices, gutted. The military office, flattened. What had been my office, gone.
“A major landmark and historic treasure was being treated like a fixer-upper on HGTV’s Property Brothers. It wasn’t the loss of the blue-and-white striped drapes, the velvet sofa, the bookshelves filled with memorabilia that pained me – it was the symbolic bulldozing of history and the eradication of institutional memory.
“I kept thinking of everyone across the country that took pride in that building. I felt a sense of loss and grief with every blow from the wrecking ball. The innards of the East Wing were spread out for everyone to see, like a rare and precious animal that had been hunted down and killed.”
A View from the East Wing, by Dr Jill Biden, is available now from Gallery Books
