WASHINGTON - President Dona


Donald Trump had assembled reporters to watch him sign dozens of executive orders in the Oval Office when one asked him if former President Joe Biden had left a letter for him, a ritual for departing American leaders.

"He may have," Trump said, seeming unsure, as if he hadn't looked yet. "Wait, don't they leave it in the desk?"

He opened a drawer in the Resolute Desk and found the sealed letter, holding it up and musing about reading it together with the assembled media before thinking better of it.

"Thank you very much, I may not have seen this for months," Trump said.

There were many moments Monday that illustrated the dramatic change in leadership as Trump took office. He delivered three speeches in three locations after his outdoor inauguration was canceled because of the cold, each time channeling his no-holds barred, campaign-rally style.

The aggressive tone for the opening salvo of Trump’s second administration, and his pardoning of Jan. 6 rioters and signing a blizzard of executive orders aimed at dramatically reorienting federal policy, were more consequential. The letter discovery was trivial in comparison.

But the Monday evening Oval Office press event that was carried live on CNN and Fox News illustrated the unscripted, unpredictable nature of the new president, in stark contrast to a departing leader who was known to be tightly stage managed.


It’s a contrast Trump’s team was eager to point out Monday, touting a signing ceremony that morphed into an expansive and informal first-day press conference as evidence of a new era of transparency. Whether or not that transparency continues, the event was a change from Biden.

“Did Biden ever do news conferences like this?” Trump mused in what seemed to be more of a rhetorical question that served as a jab at his predecessor’s unwillingness to regularly engage the media, especially toward the end of his presidency, a stand-in for questions about his age and mental fitness.

It’s a contrast Trump’s team was eager to point out Monday, touting a signing ceremony that morphed into an expansive and informal first-day press conference as evidence of a new era of transparency. Whether or not that transparency continues, the event was a change from Biden.

“Did Biden ever do news conferences like this?” Trump mused in what seemed to be more of a rhetorical question that served as a jab at his predecessor’s unwillingness to regularly engage the media, especially toward the end of his presidency, a stand-in for questions about his age and mental fitness.

Former President Barack Obama wrote to Trump at the start of his first administration, telling him "we are just temporary occupants of this office. That makes us guardians of those democratic institutions and traditions—like rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection and civil liberties—that our forebears fought and bled for."