President Biden said that President-elect Trump was "complimentary" to him about some of his economic policies when the two met in the Oval Office following the election to pledge a smooth transition.
"I was very straightforward with Trump when he got elected," Biden said in an exit interview given to USA Today. "I invited him immediately to the White House. I spent two hours with him. He talked about, he was very complimentary about some of the economic things I had done."
Trump and Biden met in the Oval Office in November after Trump won the election, reviving a presidential tradition that was skipped in 2020.
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Biden said that Trump told him he was "leaving with a good record" as president. Biden also recounted telling Trump that it would be "counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores."
When asked if Trump revealed what he would do as president in a conversation about pardons, Biden said that Trump was largely silent on that issue.
Biden defended pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, in the interview, saying that he "paid all his taxes." Biden also said that it was excessive to jail Hunter for gun charges.
Hunter Biden was found guilty in 2024 of making a false statement regarding the purchase of a gun, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed gun dealer, and possession of a gun by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.
"But the point was, no one's ever been tried on that. Nobody," Biden said. "And they potentially put him in jail for X number of years for that. He had it for 10 days. Two days in his possession."
"And that's why I stepped in," Biden said.
Reached for comment, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital that the president-elect won because of Biden's "disastrous policies."
"The fact is that Joe Biden’s disastrous policies led to record inflation and an economy that left behind all Americans," he said. "That is why President Trump was elected with a historic mandate to continue the massively successful economic policies from the first Trump Administration that benefitted all Americans."
Fox News' Brooke Singman, Emma Colton and Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.
