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By Amanda Castro
Associate News Editor
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Former President Joe Biden has revealed what President Donald Trump wrote in the private letter he left behind in the Oval Office in 2021, more than five years after Biden described the note as "very generous" but declined to disclose its contents.
The letter's cordial wishes and praise for Biden present a striking contrast to Trump's public campaign to overturn his 2020 election defeat and the political hostility that has defined their relationship ever since.
Biden is publishing the letter in full in his forthcoming presidential memoir, Promise Me, America, due out November 17, as the former president limits promotional appearances while undergoing cancer treatment.
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The letter, dated January 20, 2021, was left in an envelope addressed "To '46,'" referring to Biden becoming the nation's 46th president, according to The New York Times, which obtained a book excerpt and reviewed a photocopy of the original note.
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Instead of disputing Biden's victory or repeating the fraud allegations Trump was making publicly, the outgoing president wrote about the weight of the presidency and expressed confidence in his successor.
"Many presidents have come and gone who simply governed as Republicans or Democrats," Trump wrote, according to the Times. "Largely, they did not change history, they were just swept along in its relentless tide."
"This will not happen to you because I know how much you love the American people," he continued.
For Biden, the apparent disconnect between the private message and Trump's public behavior became one of the letter's defining features. Biden writes in his memoir that reading it made him feel "as if there were two Donald Trumps," describing the note as unusually warm even as he accuses Trump elsewhere in the book of undermining American democracy.
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