US presidential transition meetings through the years – in pictures

It is traditional in the US for the outgoing president to receive the president-elect at the White House before their inauguration to prepare for a smooth transition. Donald Trump broke with this tradition in 2020 in disputing the election result. As Trump meets Joe Biden in 2024, we take a look back at past transition meetings

The president-elect, Donald Trump, and President Joe Biden talking in the Oval Office of the White House, 13 November 2024

Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

President George W Bush and President-elect Barack Obama meet in the Oval Office, 10 November 2008

Photograph: Eric Draper/Reuters

President-elect Bill Clinton is greeted by President George Bush at the White House, 18 November 1992

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

President-elect George Bush and President Ronald Reagan, accompanied by their wives, head for the Oval Office, 9 November 1988

Photograph: Bettmann archive

President Jimmy Carter and President-elect Ronald Reagan shake hands in front of their wives on the White House’s South Portico, 20 November 1980

Photograph: Arnie Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images

Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon talk in the Oval Office about the transition of power prior to Nixon’s resignation after the Watergate scandal, 9 August 1974

Photograph: Consolidated News Pictures/AFP/Getty Images

President-elect Richard Nixon and President Lyndon B Johnson confer on the orderly transition of power, 12 December 1968

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

President Dwight D Eisenhower greets President-elect John F Kennedy on the North Portico of the White House, 6 December 1960

Photograph: Bettmann archive

Vice-president Harry S Truman and President Franklin D Roosevelt, 1945. When Roosevelt died in office in 1945, Truman took over

Photograph: Universal history archive/Getty Images

President-elect Franklin D Roosevelt holds a telegram of congratulations from President Herbert Hoover, 8 November 1932. The transition between Hoover and Roosevelt was not a smooth one, with FDR refusing Hoover’s requests for meetings to calm investors amid a financial crisis

Photograph: Bettmann archive

President Thomas Woodrow Wilson, left, and his successor, President Warren G Harding, in the back of a carriage on inauguration day, 1921

Photograph: Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images

President William Howard Taft (left) and his successor, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, in Washington, 23 March 1913

Photograph: Trampus, from L’Illustrazione Italiana/Bibioteca Ambrosiana/De Agostini/Getty Images

An illustration of the former first lady Julia Dent Grant entertaining President Rutherford B Hayes and his wife at a party in the White House after Hayes’s inauguration, 1877

Photograph: Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images