Nearly six years after Donald Trump left the White House, the contents of the private letter he left for Joe Biden have finally come to light, drawn from excerpts of Biden’s upcoming memoir, Promise Me, America, set for release on November 17.
The tradition of a handwritten note from an outgoing president to his successor dates back to 1989, when Ronald Reagan left George H.W. Bush a message telling him “don’t let the turkeys get you down.” The contents of these letters are rarely made public, and Biden himself kept the particulars private for years, describing the note at the time only as “very generous.”
According to the Associated Press, which reviewed a copy of the two-page handwritten letter, Trump wrote it on White House stationery with a Sharpie pen and addressed it to “46,” referring to Biden’s place as the nation’s 46th president.
In the letter, Trump expressed confidence that Biden would stay true to himself and to the American people, and reflected on the opportunity Biden had to leave a mark on history.
“This will not happen to you because I know how much you love the American people,” Trump wrote, according to the AP’s review.
Biden reportedly was taken aback by the warmth of the note. He showed it to several staff members after his inauguration but declined to let them read the full text, keeping it a private communication between the two men.
Trump has spoken publicly before about the care he put into writing it. In a 2023 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said, “I took a lot of time in thinking about it,” calling the note simply “a nice note.”
The goodwill does not appear to run in both directions in Biden’s memoir. In other passages, Biden is reported to criticize Trump over what he views as damage to American institutions and the unwinding of his administration’s policies, writing of the events of January 6, 2021: “What Trump did on January 6, 2021, should never be forgotten. It should follow him to his grave.”
