Trump’s Private Farewell Letter to Biden Is Out. It Says Biden Could Change History.

For almost six years, the most gracious thing Donald Trump ever wrote to Joe Biden sat in an envelope that only Biden had read. Now everyone gets to see it. Biden’s new memoir, “Promise Me, America,” prints in full the letter Trump left him in the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2021, and the words are about as warm as one president can be to the man replacing him.

“You now have the opportunity to choose your place in history, and I know you will be true to yourself and the American people,” Trump wrote, according to an excerpt first reported Tuesday by The New York Times and quoted by The Hill.

Then came the line that will get quoted for years. “Many presidents have come and gone who simply governed as Republicans or Democrats,” Trump wrote. “Largely, they did not change history, they were just swept along in its relentless tide. This will not happen to you because I know how much you love the American people.”

Two pages in black Sharpie

The Associated Press reviewed a photocopy. It’s two pages, handwritten in Trump’s signature black Sharpie on White House stationery, and the envelope is addressed “To ‘46,’” a nod to Biden being the 46th president. The rest of the letter keeps the same tone. Trump told Biden that he carried the hopes of the whole country on his shoulders, that the weight of that never leaves a president, and that millions of people were counting on him to succeed.

None of this is a total surprise to people who followed the handoff closely. On his first day in office, Biden told reporters that Trump had left him “a very generous letter,” and then refused to say what was in it, calling it private. He showed the note to a few aides but didn’t let them read it, according to the AP’s account. In Chris Whipple’s book on his White House, Biden was quoted calling the gesture “shockingly gracious,” as Business Insider reported at the time.

Trump himself never made a secret of it, either. Asked about the letter on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in September 2023, he called it “a nice note,” said it was Biden’s call whether to release it, and added, “I took a lot of time in thinking about it.” Reading it now, that shows.

A tradition Trump kept

The Oval Office letter is one of the quieter rituals of the presidency. Ronald Reagan started the modern version in 1989, leaving George H.W. Bush a note on a notepad that read “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.” Four years later, Bush left one for Bill Clinton, the man who had just beaten him. “Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you,” Bush wrote. Ever since, outgoing presidents have left a few words on the Resolute Desk for whoever comes next, no matter how the race went.

Trump kept that tradition in 2021, and the letter shows he took it seriously. That’s the part critics have spent years leaving out. The same man they described as tearing up every norm on his way out the door sat down on his last morning and wrote, by hand, that he believed his successor loved the country and would rise above the tide of ordinary presidents.

Biden seems to have been caught off guard by it himself. In the book he writes that it was “as if there were two Donald Trumps.” He describes the letter as offering best wishes in warm language that sounded like it came from an old friend.

The White House says Biden ignored the advice

The White House confirmed the letter is real. Communications director Steven Cheung didn’t waste the chance to point out the gap between what Trump wished for and what he thinks Biden did with the job.

“Joe Biden should have heeded the President’s wise words, but instead he tried to destroy this country and weaponize the justice system against his political enemies,” Cheung said. “Biden is a disgrace, and America is better off with him no longer as president.”

That’s the sharpest point in all of this. Trump’s letter told Biden he had a chance to choose his place in history. Four years later, Biden’s Justice Department had brought two federal cases against Trump, both of which were dropped after he won in 2024. Supporters of the President will read the letter as proof of who reached out and who didn’t.

The rest of Biden’s book doesn’t carry that same goodwill. In an excerpt The Atlantic published Monday, Biden accuses Trump’s team of trying to “tear down institutions and inflame hatreds,” goes after the Department of Government Efficiency, and saves his harshest words for Jan. 6, 2021. “What Trump did on January 6, 2021, should never be forgotten,” he writes. “It should follow him to his grave.”

So the same book holds two very different documents: a handwritten letter from Trump wishing Biden success, and a long argument from Biden about why Trump is a danger. Readers can decide which one sounds more like the bigger man.

“Promise Me, America” goes on sale Tuesday, Nov. 17. The letter itself is only two pages. For a lot of people, it’ll be the only part they read.