This week, former President Biden gave his first public interview since leaving the White House in January. During the interview, Biden rebuked the way that Trump is handling Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine as a “modern-day appeasement.” Biden was interviewed by the BBC in Delaware. He addressed the current state of global affairs and did not hold back on his opinion of his successor.
Biden Didn’t Hold Back On Trump
When asked about Trump’s behavior since moving into the office, Biden gave a blistering response on issues from Trump’s threats to Greenland, making Canada the 51st state, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that?” he asked Nick Robinson during the interview. “That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”
When asked about Ukraine, Biden said that his administration had supplied the country with “everything they needed” to help them achieve independence. He then added that the U.S. was also prepared to offer more support if Putin escalated the matter. The Biden administration did not doubt that Putin would escalate matters. Trump has previously said that Biden was “played like a fiddle” by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Biden On Ukraine
Biden went on to condemn Trump and his administration for suggesting that Ukraine would have to hand over certain territories in order to achieve a peace deal with Putin. “It is modern-day appeasement,” Biden said. He added that anyone who believed Putin was going to walk away from the conflict with Ukraine was “just foolish.”
“I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him,” he said of Putin. “I don’t quite understand.”
Trump and Zelensky Confrontation
Back in February, the tensions between Kyiv and the White House grew after Trump and Vice President JD Vance ambushed Zelensky in the Oval Office. Talks between the three men quickly became a shouting match. During the confrontation, Trump accused Zelensky of “gambling with World War III.” Zelensky left the White House angry and without the mineral deal his country needed to secure the U.S. help to end the war.
NATO
Biden went on to share his fears about the U.S. pulling out of NATO under the Trump administration. “I think it would change the modern history of the world if that occurs,” Biden said. “We’re the only nation in a position to have the capacity to bring people together, [to] lead the world. Otherwise, you’re going to have China and the former Soviet Union, Russia, stepping up.”
When asked about dropping out of the presidential race early, Biden said, “We left at a time when we had a good candidate. Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away. And it was a hard decision. I think it was the right decision. I think that… it was just a difficult decision.”
Final Thoughts
“Our economy was growing. We were moving in a direction where the stock market was way up,” he said. “We were in a situation where we were expanding our influence around the world in a positive way, increasing trade.” When Biden was asked for his opinion on Trump 2.0, he said: “I don’t see anything that was triumphant.”
