The meeting between Biden and Trump at the White House was more than just a photo opportunity

For years, Chairman Joe Biden has emphasized that the peaceful transfer of power is imperative to the preservation of American democracy. On Wednesday he got a chance to show what he meant, hosting the newly elected president Donald Trump at the White House.

It was in stark contrast to four years earlier. On the same date in 2020, Trump was still silent refuse to allow the electionseven though the race had been called for a week, they instead chose to spread conspiracy theories that culminated in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

Biden has spent the past four years warning of the danger to democracy that Trump posed, including two years in which the two men campaigned directly against each other. Trump, for his part, had called Biden baseless “the destroyer of American democracy.”

Still, the two sat side by side in front of a roaring fireplace in the White House as they answered questions from reporters. Trump later praised Biden to the New York Post. “It’s going very smoothly,” he says the outlet told us Thursday, highlighting his “very, very good relationship” with the Biden White House.

It was also more than just a photo session. The Biden administration is also working with Trump’s transition team in a vital bureaucratic process to begin transitioning the apparatus of the federal government. The day after the 2024 election, the General Services Administration issued a decision statement recognizing Trump’s victory and saying the agency “stands ready to work with President-elect Trump’s transition team to complete the required agreement to receive administrative services and support from the GSA.”

This too was a contrast. Trump’s refusal to concede in 2020 even extended to these behind-the-scenes efforts, such as Trump appointee Emily Murphy of the General Services Administration delayed the department’s recognition of Biden’s victory. These actions not only legitimized Trump’s false denial of his election loss, but they also blocked mundane but essential duties designed to keep the executive branch functioning uninterrupted — tasks such as allocating email addresses and office space, allocating salaries, and more.

There is another moment of contrast coming that will be even more important. In 52 days, on January 6, Vice President Kamala Harris will perform her duties as president of the U.S. Senate to count the electoral votes and certify her own election loss. She will do so in the same place that pro-Trump extremists overran, threatening to hang her predecessor for doing what every vice president before him had done.

It is a sacred duty for newly elected Vice President JD Vance said if he had been in that position, he would not have performed in 2020.

In all these actions, Biden and Harris are leading by example. These moments show that their commitment to democracy runs deeper than their own political ambitions and demonstrate the importance of the very norms that Trump has tried to trample. However, it will be a brief respite, a swan song for Biden’s time as president, the last gasp of normalcy in the executive branch and the calm before the storm of a second Trump term.

Watch for more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez, and Symone Sanders-Townsend “The weekend” every Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 AM ET on MSNBC.