‘What president ever talks like that?’ Biden on Trump’s leadership so far
In his first post-presidential interview since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, Joe Biden equated the pressure the president is putting on Ukraine to “modern-day appeasement,” a reference to the British government’s pre-Second World War effort to curtail the Nazis’ invasion of Europe.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today program to mark the 80th anniversary of VE-Day (Victory in Europe), the former president said that Trump’s pursuit of Panama, Greenland and Canada has weakened global trade and diplomatic partnerships in the U.S. and spawned a sense of mistrust among its European allies and NATO, which was formed after the Second World War.
“What president ever talks like that?” Biden said. “That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity — not about confiscation,” he told the BBC’s Nick Robinson, adding that “Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America and the leadership of America.”
Biden also said it was a “difficult decision” to leave the U.S. presidential race last year, four months out from election day, to make way for former vice-president Kamala Harris to take on Trump. He added that making the call earlier, as some critics had suggested, wouldn’t “have mattered.”
Biden’s mention of appeasement refers to former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s efforts in the 1930s to weaken Hitler by offering Germany land to halt the Nazis’ annexation of Europe, which Biden likened to Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine should hand over Crimea to Russia and that parts of the country captured during the conflict should remain under Russian rule.
Trump’s opposition to the war in Ukraine stems from his argument that providing aid is a waste of American taxpayers’ money.
He briefly paused U.S. assistance to the country in March but resumed it after signing a deal with Ukraine that granted the U.S. access to its expansive mineral resources, which the president argued could open the door to further U.S. aid.
In late April, the president said that Crimea, a strategic peninsula along the Black Sea in southern Ukraine that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, “will stay with Russia.”
Those comments came about two months after a now-infamous exchange between Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump and Vice-President JD Vance in the Oval Office, which Biden referred to as “beneath America.”
“I don’t understand how they fail to understand that there’s strength in alliances,” Biden said of the Trump administration on Wednesday.
Asked about Trump’s triumphant celebration of his first 100 days in office, the former president replied that he’ll let history pass judgment.
“I don’t see anything that was triumphant,” he said.
You can watch the full video over at the BBC.
— With files from the Associated Press
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