Why is Biden letting Trump take the spotlight already? Insiders are divided

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. open image in gallery President-elect Donald Trump and First Lady Jill Biden talk at the reopening ceremony for Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral Not long after Trump’s victory, Biden left the continental United States for a ten-day trip to Peru and Brazil for the APEC and G20 summits, where he met with a succession of heads of state and government. And during the days-long rebel action that toppled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Trump spoke publicly before Biden, with a Truth Social post in which he declared that the US should “have nothing to do with it” and “not get involved.” Biden didn’t weigh in until Sunday, after it was clear that Assad had fallen, with a brief statement delivered to television cameras in the West Wing. One adviser also pointed to the Democratic National Committee’s aggressive messaging regarding Trump’s proposed nominees as evidence that Biden still takes his role as Democratic Party leader seriously in the waning days of his term. In a statement to The Independent, White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates pointed to Biden making “every day of this term count” by working to “accelerate the implementation of an unprecedented agenda that will benefit hardworking Americans for generations: bringing American manufacturing home from overseas, taking the most significant action to fight climate change in human history, beating Big Pharma so Medicare can negotiate lower drug costs, bipartisan legislation to protect communities from gun violence, repairing and modernizing our nation’s infrastructure, and hundreds of groundbreaking judicial confirmations.” Biden, Bates said, is “leading by example for the sake of American democracy, honoring his campaign promise to respect the will of the voters and provide an orderly transition” and “also actively engaging with a wide range of leaders about the future of the Democratic Party, the need to continue fight for working people.”