FIFTY-THREE
Trump, with First Lady Melania Trump, came down from the residence early on January 20. The staff of the White House—the cooks and butlers and housekeepers—waited for them shortly before 8 a.m. in the Diplomatic Reception Room.
As the first couple entered, staff clapped and some shed tears as the president thanked them for their service and shook their hands. A White House usher presented the president and first lady with the American flag that had flown over the White House the day they arrived four years earlier and a gleaming cherrywood set for it.
Trump spotted Robert O’Brien and Pat Cipollone and waved them over for a picture.
Melania wore sunglasses. Those who spoke with her and leaned in to bid farewell could see a hint of tears.
“Give my love to Lo-Mari and the two girls,” Melania told O’Brien.
The Trumps then went outside, into the cold morning light, and boarded Marine One.
Over at Andrews Air Force Base, Trump’s family waited for them to arrive. In a reception room near the tarmac and Air Force One, Trump’s youngest daughter, Tiffany, snapped a picture on her phone of the television showing the helicopter taking off.
Other Trump children watched Marine One take off in silence. Everyone in the room was watching the same TV. Spellbound. Taking in the moment.
It was full circle from January 20, 2017. That day, Trump and President Obama rode together from the White House to the Capitol. Senator Roy Blunt, one of the senators responsible for inaugural planning, rode with them.
During the ride, Trump turned to Obama.
“What was your biggest mistake?” Trump asked.
Obama paused and glanced at Trump.
“I can’t think of anything,” he said.
Trump changed the subject.
“Is this the car you use all the time?”
Mark Meadows, the outgoing Trump chief of staff, invited Klain to meet him in his White House office on January 20 for the handover. Klain was not going to attend the inauguration and instead would monitor real-time intelligence and law enforcement reporting from the White House. Tens of thousands of National Guard troops remained in Washington, wearing camouflage and helmets, carrying rifles. They had flooded much of downtown, which was barricaded by metal fences.
Violence and the threat of violence was now part of an inauguration—and American politics.
A clash on the streets or even a single gunshot could mar, and under the worst circumstances, define the inauguration. Klain was anxious, tense.
Klain arrived at the White House about 10:30 a.m. He had worked in the White House five times and never seen the West Wing so deserted. It was eerie. Few Trump people were there. The well-known offices and elegant hallways were filled with cleaning crews.
He walked to the chief of staff’s office. The door was closed. He knocked. No answer. He turned the knob. Locked. He stood outside the second most important office in Washington, soon to be his, barred from entering, and waited.
A Trump aide eventually approached and said, “Mr. Meadows is on the phone.” Klain put the phone to his ear.
I’m running late, Meadows said. He had accompanied Trump to his departure and he would be there soon.
When Meadows arrived, he took Klain in.
Our meeting will have to be briefer than I intended, Meadows said. Trump had unexpectedly signed a final pardon for Al Pirro, the ex-husband of Fox News host and Trump ally Jeanine Pirro. Meadows had to run it to the Justice Department before noon so it could be legally registered.
Meadows asked if Klain had been briefed on various continuity of government programs, top secret codeword plans for ensuring presidential succession and continuation of government in any conceivable emergency—bombings, air strikes, cyberattacks, even invasions.
Yes, Klain said. Two days before he had met with Brigadier General Jonathan Howerton, who headed the White House military office of more than 2,500 employees, for a complete briefing.
Have you been briefed on the confidential capacities at the White House for security and communications? Meadows asked.
Klain said he had been fully briefed on those as well.
“I wish you all the luck in the world,” Meadows said graciously. “I wish you success. I’ll be rooting for you. I’ll be praying for you.”
Klain thanked him. Meadows left.
It was about 11:15 a.m., 45 minutes before Klain could do anything, even sign on to his computers. He was idle.
He walked down to the Oval Office where a crew was setting up Biden’s office, installing artwork. There were busts of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks. A massive portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt. And Avenue in the Rain, an impressionistic early-20th-century painting of American flags by Childe Hassam, also hung by Clinton and Obama.
Out went a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the owner of hundreds of slaves and who had waged a brutal campaign against Native Americans.
Biden’s friends said it was total Biden and Donilon. Soul interior decorating.
In the days after the election, O’Brien had started preparing for the transition to a Biden presidency. He also said so publicly. Trump was not happy but did not order him to stop his work.
On January 20, O’Brien had prepared 40 or 50 binders of documents, some 4,000 pages. On the desk, soon to be Jake Sullivan’s, he placed a personal letter with a memo on highly classified covert actions and special access, codeword programs. He pulled out the various identification cards he carried, passwords for different contingencies, and placed them on top of his letter.
Anything you need, O’Brien told Sullivan, you let me know.
A photographer snapped a photo of the two of them, one with mask on, one with no mask.
“God bless,” O’Brien said to Sullivan. The authority was passed to the new team.
Down Pennsylvania Avenue, Pence was not planning to speak with Biden on Inauguration Day, but their Secret Service details crossed paths in the Capitol. Biden smiled broadly and approached him.
“Thanks for being here!” Biden said. “I’m glad you’re here.” They had met years ago at the vice presidential residence after Pence was elected. Pence recalled the meeting several times to others, calling Biden a friendly man who went out of his way to welcome Pence’s family.
Former president Bill Clinton made a point to wander to the front and greet Pence.
“Thank you for what you did. You did the right thing,” Clinton said.
Harris was escorted to her seat by Eugene Goodman, the Black Capitol Police officer who acted valiantly on January 6. Biden was in a heavy black winter coat and powder blue tie. Members of the Senate and House sat behind him, masked.
Harris had two Bibles at the ceremony. One belonged to the late Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, and the other to Regina Shelton, her second mother during her childhood. She wore her signature white pearls, a symbol of her sorority, as did other Democratic women in homage to her new place in history.
Although massive security precautions were in place to protect the transfer of power, extreme worry remained inside the West Wing and at the classified command center monitoring the entire capital. Bridges, monuments and cars were being watched. Soldiers patrolled the Capitol with their M4 firearms. Police officers made their rounds.
Milley was on the inaugural platform. Being there was part of the job, but he thought he might be one of the happiest people up there. Not because it was President Biden, but because Trump was out of the presidency and it looked like another peaceful transfer of power.
Ahead of the inaugural, as he had reviewed war plans and the authorities for nuclear weapons command and control, Biden had thanked Milley personally, though he was vague about what exactly he was referencing.
Milley had not shared his decision to “pull a Schlesinger” outside the tightest possible circle.
“We know what you went through,” Biden said. “We know what you did.”
At the Capitol and on the dais, Vice President Harris and various incoming cabinet members gave versions of the same thank-you. Milley did not know the extent of what they knew about his struggles with Trump, but he suspected they did. That was Washington with its flow of sensitive, inside information—sometimes wrong, but in this case right.
At one point, Pence walked by.
Milley nodded and said, “Thanks for your leadership, Mr. Vice President.”
Pence nodded and moved on. The moment went quickly, almost instantly.
Milley noticed the silence.
Clyburn circulated, kingmaker-style. President George W. Bush waved him over.
“You know, you’re the savior,” Bush told Clyburn. “If you had not endorsed Joe Biden, we would not be having this transfer of power today.”
Joe Biden is the only one who could have defeated Trump, Bush said.
Five minutes earlier, Bill Clinton had used the same word—“savior”—when chatting with Clyburn.
“I guess you overheard Bill Clinton,” Clyburn told Bush as they took selfies with attendees.
The conversation with Hillary Clinton was more serious. “It is very important to the future of the country for accountability to be had, as it relates to January 6th,” Clyburn told her.
Biden’s thin white hair, longer than usual, fluffed up with the wind as he sat up front. He watched intently as Amanda Gorman, a young Black woman and Harvard graduate, delivered her poem, “The Hill We Climb.”
“We’ve braved the belly of the beast,” Gorman said to millions, wearing a bright yellow coat. “We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace.
“Somehow,” she said, “we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”
Klain walked over to the national security adviser’s office where Jake Sullivan was moving in. They had known each other for 15 years, since 2006, when Klain was a partner at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers. Sullivan, a summer associate, worked directly for Klain. Klain later had helped Sullivan get a job on Obama’s 2008 campaign.
The pattern was typical of Biden’s White House, where so many had grown up together from low-level jobs to now.
Before noon, Klain and Sullivan headed over to the Situation Room. They had arranged for a secure video conference to get updates on threats from all the security and law enforcement leaders: NSA, Homeland Security, FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Security was the only thing on their mind as they settled into their seats. A video feed of Biden’s inaugural was on one screen in the room. The sound was purposely off so they could concentrate solely on seeing anything out of the ordinary. They had both offered ideas and knew the final version of Biden’s inaugural address.
They watched on a nearby television as Biden placed his hand on a family Bible with Celtic cross, a nod to his Irish heritage and the same Bible he used at his boys’ hospital bedside in 1973 to be sworn into the Senate, following the death of his wife and daughter. He became the nation’s second ever Catholic president, following in the steps of the hero of his youth, JFK.
Biden’s 2,552-word speech, which Donilon and Meacham and others had helped to shape, was an ode to bipartisanship, as well as to democracy.
“This is democracy’s day,” Biden began. “A day of history and hope. Of renewal and resolve. Through a crucible for the ages America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge. Today, we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but of a cause, the cause of democracy.
“We will press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities,” he told the small, socially distant crowd in Washington.
Lawmakers clapped. Small flags fluttered on the Mall in lieu of spectators—191,500 of them, planted by the Presidential Inaugural Committee as a memorial for those whose lives had been lost during the pandemic, and as a stand-in for the thousands who could not attend.
Breakfast of southern-style steak and eggs and grits was served on Trump’s final flight to Florida. Once landed, a few thousand people lined the streets to watch Trump’s motorcade head to Mar-a-Lago. It was a slow crawl, with Trump waving and giving a thumbs-up through the tinted glass.
When Trump’s motorcade entered his property, he went straight to his residence, joined by Melania. He had ten minutes left as president.
At 11:59 a.m., January 20, Trump was in his apartment. No tweets. No speeches.
At 12:01 p.m., several Secret Service agents began reducing their setup around the estate. Trump was no longer president. No more access to the nuclear “football.” The security footprint shrunk in an instant.
After the inaugural ended, Vice President Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, escorted Pence and Karen Pence to the bottom of the Capitol steps. The Pences headed to Andrews Air Force Base to fly to Columbus, Indiana, with family members and the family’s dogs, cat and rabbit on board.
It was a bright afternoon when the plane landed. Two fire trucks held a large American flag from their raised ladders and the lectern on the tarmac read: “BACK HOME AGAIN.” The upbeat 1970 rocker, “All Right Now” by Free, played as Pence and his family walked toward a small stage.
“You know, we have a tradition on Air Force Two: We always invite someone to sit in the jump seat, in the cockpit, as a guest,” Karen Pence told the crowd of friends and family.
Sitting up front, she said, gives you “perspective,” since you can “kind of see where everything is and you kind of get a feel for where you are going.
“In the jump seat today was Mike,” she said. She began to cry.