On Monday, President Donald Trump teased reporters by waving a letter left for him by President Joe Biden in a drawer of the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk.
It is part of a tradition of one president leaving a welcome note to his successor.
Now its contents can be revealed.
‘As I take leave of this sacred office I wish you and your family all the best in the next four years,’ Biden wrote, according to Fox News.
‘The American people – and people around the world – look to this house for steadiness in the inevitable storms of history, and my prayer is that in the coming years will be a time of prosperity, peace, and grace for our nation.
‘May God bless you and guide you as He has blessed and guided our beloved country since our founding.’
It was signed Joe Biden and dated Jan. 20, the day he left office.
And its contents reflect a warmer tone between the two than their bitter partisan attacks during the campaign, when Biden warned that Trump was a threat to democracy and the Republican portrayed his opponent as the head of a criminal family.
President Donald Trump pulled the note from the Resolute Desk drawer on Monday
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On his first day in office, Trump was asked by reporters whether Biden had left the traditional letter.
‘He may have. Don’t they leave it in the desk? I don’t know,’ he said before rooting around in the drawers and pulling out a white envelope addressed to the 47th president.
He thanked Fox News reporter Peter Doocy for asking the question.
‘It could have been years before we found this thing,’ he said.
Trump described the contents of the letter a day later.
‘It was a very nice letter,’ he told reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
‘It was a little bit of an inspirational-type letter. Enjoy it, do a good job. Important, very important. How important the job is.’
President Ronald Reagan is thought to have started the tradition in 1989 when he left a note for George H.W. Bush, his former vice president.
It was addressed to ’47’. Trump is the 47th president (and the 45th) to have held the office
Biden was following a tradition dating back to Ronald Reagan in 1989
The Trumps saw the Bidens to their helicopter after Monday’s inauguration
He delivered it with a light touch on stationery decorated with turkeys climbing on an elephant and the legend: ‘Don’t let the turkeys get you down.’
‘I treasure the memories we share and I wish you all the very best,’ he wrote. ‘You’ll be in my prayers.’
He added that he would miss their lunches together
Trump refused to attend Biden’s 2021 inauguration as he pursued unfounded claims that the election was rigged.
But he did still leave a letter.
‘The president wrote a very generous letter,’ Biden said. ‘Because it was private, I will not talk about it until I talk to him, but it was generous.’
Its contents have never been released.