Analysis: White House touts 'norms' and 'institutions' it long warned Trump would obliterate

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and senior White House aides have pivoted from their dire warnings about fascism, talking up the same “norms” and “institutions” they warned would be destroyed if Donald Trump returned to power.

Seated in beige chairs Wednesday in the Oval Office — a fire raging behind them and portraits of former Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln hanging overhead — Biden shook Trump’s hand and uttered a deadpan, “Welcome. Welcome back.”

His top spokesperson later told reporters that Biden, despite his grave warnings about a new Trump term, “looked forward to the meeting,” which she dubbed “very cordial, very gracious, and substantive.” The same spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, even said Biden “is always going to, obviously, keep that line of communication open to the president-elect.”

It was all very surreal stuff, when viewed through the lens of the last four years.

The outgoing commander-in-chief devoted several high-profile speeches during his presidency and ample campaign-trail rhetoric to warning voters about a second Trump term. Perhaps the most memorable came on Sept. 1, 2022 at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, when Biden said bluntly that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic.”

Fast forward nearly two years, to a big-dollar July fundraiser in Los Angeles when Biden, shortly before he ended his bid for a second term, declared that “institutions matter,” adding of Trump’s role in firing up the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021: “What he did on January 6th, and now he’s literally saying if he doesn’t win there’ll be a bloodbath.”

“It’s outrageous — what he’s talking about is outrageous,” the president added in July. “The idea that he’s actually threatened retribution. This is the United States of America. Did you ever think you’d ever, ever, ever hear anything like this?”

Despite Biden’s words and those of other Democrats, the Biden White House’s striking shift in tone began last Thursday, when the president addressed the country about the election result from the Rose Garden. “The American experiment endures,” he said. “We’re going to be OK.

“Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable. … Remember a defeat does not mean we are defeated. We lost this battle,” Biden said. “The America of your dreams is calling for you to get back up. That’s the story of America for over 240 years and counting.”

The messaging shift was jarring, as Biden, his top aides and prominent congressional Democrats had for years spoke of a Trump return to power in dire — almost catastrophic — terms. It continued Tuesday in the White House briefing room as reporters questioned Jean-Pierre about Trump’s visit, at the president’s invitation, to the Oval Office.

“He wants to show the American people that the system works,” she said. “To trust in the institution, to trust that the norms do matter here, to trust that he is showing, by leadership, what a transition, a peaceful transition, looks like … [what] a smooth transition looks like. And that is the message.”

It also is a drastic change in message from Democrats’ collective campaign trail talk about Trump obliterating those “norms” and either neutering or using those federal “institutions” for his own personal retribution.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee who lost last week to Trump, on Oct. 23 responded, “Yes, I do” when asked during a CNN-hosted town hall if she believed Trump was a “fascist.” Later during the same prime-time event, she urged voters to prioritize “not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

‘Campaign in poetry’

During a June 7 speech in Normandy, France honoring D-Day veterans, Biden cast the United States and world as being in a struggle between dictators and freedom. He never said Trump’s name, but he didn’t have to. His message and intent were clear as the French sky that day.

In a plea to American voters, Biden that day urged them to fight the “most natural instinct … to walk away.” Instead, he said Americans should resist those who intend to “force their will upon others to seize power.”

“American democracy asks the hardest of things: to believe that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves,” he said. “So democracy begins with each of us.”

The White House declined to comment.

But David Jolly, a former Florida GOP lawmaker, said “Biden has earned the presumption of a defender of our democratic institutions.”

“He ran on that in 2020, spoke to that this [election] cycle, and demonstrated that in his commitment to an orderly transition of power,” Jolly added. “I see a remarkable consistency, grounded in personal humility and constitutional respect, not an inconsistency.”

Ivan Zapien, a former DNC official and Senate staffer, pointed to a remark once uttered by the late New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

Cuomo “summed it up best: ‘You campaign in poetry and govern in prose,’” Zapien said in an email. “Now that the campaign is over, they are peacefully and gracefully handing over power and rooting for the intuitions and norms they cherish.”

Given the election results, with Trump’s decisive Electoral College win and sweep of the Rust Belt and Sun Belt battleground states, what choice does Biden have?

In Normandy in June, Biden said that “to surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable,” adding: “Were we to do that, it means we’d be forgetting what happened here in these hallowed beaches. Make no mistake. We will not bow down.”

Voters did not “bow down” to Trump and his worldview, complete with his vow to be a “dictator on Day 1.” A majority of them — 75.8 million and counting — embraced it at the ballot box.