Six months after his party lost the presidential election, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Back in the public spotlights with a destructive conviction of his successor and his treatment of international affairs.
In his first broadcast interview since leaving the White House, Mr. Biden attacked the management of President Trump of the war in Ukraine and his handling of global allies. Speak to the BBCMr Biden also defended the timing of his own withdrawal from the Presidential Campaign of 2024.
The former president has selected Mr. Trump’s actions on foreign policy – including his combative encounter In the Oval Office in February with President Volodyymyr Zensky from Ukraine.
“I thought it was a kind of America in the way it took place,” Mr Biden said about the meeting. He also pointed to calls from Mr. Trump Resume the Gulf of Mexicotake back The Panama Canal And Groons of Greenland.
“What the hell is going on here? Which president ever talks like that? That is not who we are,” said Mr. Biden. “We are about freedom, democracy, opportunity – not about seizure.”
Although he did not mention Mr Trump by name, his comments were a striking deviation from a long tradition in which former presidents refuse the leaders who follow. The attack suggested that Mr Biden, 82, sees himself as a public role in his party, even as many Democrats blame him for their defeat of 2024 and want to concentrate on a new generation of leaders.
Although many Democrats find it politically harmful to concentrate too much on their last president, Mr. Biden seems inclined to defend his record and try to shape his estate.
In his speaking style, Mr. Biden poured ‘so successful on our agenda’. He again defended his decision to seek re -election last year, despite the poll that, even before he started his campaign, demonstrated that many Democrats did not want him to run a second term.
“I don’t think it would have done,” he said when he was asked if he thought he should have stopped before his disastrous debate performance in June. “I don’t think that would have made much difference.”
The interview is part of a public re -emergence by Mr Biden, who has held a relatively low profile since leaving the White House in January. In recent weeks he has been seen at the opening of ‘Othello’, a popular Broadway show, and At the Vatican For the funeral of Pope Franciscus.
Mr. Biden is planned to appear on ABC’s “The View” for another interview on Thursday, where he is expected to be asked for Mr Trump and to defend his own file as president.
Mr. Biden routinely avoided dealing with the news media and both candidate and president, with his employees to the utmost to keep him away from reporters. He opted for a British outlet to make his post-presidential news media debut, followed by a day of talk show, who continued his tradition to shun the traditional American press.
Three weeks ago he gave a speech for lawyers of the disabled in Chicago in which he accused the current administration From “an ax” to the Social Security Administration and closed Mr Trump as “damage and destruction” to the benefit program.
In addition to expressing his dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump’s leadership, Mr Biden can also increase his profile for financial gain.
His speech in Chicago was paid and, according to two people who are familiar with the issue, he is expected to participate in more speaking commitments in the future. He also works on a memoir about his office time and has again signed at Creative Artists Agency, which represented him from 2017 to 2020.
The post-presidential costs of his family have risen since Mr Trump took office. While Mr Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, have a secret service for the rest of their lives, Mr. Trump moved in March to withdraw protection For their adult children, including Hunter Biden.
While Democrats are looking for a path, it is unlikely that they are the memories of Mr. Biden welcoming the past.
David Axelrod, an early critic of Mr Biden’s running for a second term, said that Mr. Biden’s increased public profile could have the opposite effect of what the former president intends.
“It is understandable that President Biden wants to speak, given everything that has happened since January 20,” said Mr Axelrod, a former adviser of President Barack Obama. “But it is probably the only person who is more enthusiastic for him to come up again, is Donald Trump, who brings Biden seven days a week and twice on Sundays.”
For years, Mr Biden and his assistants led that he was the only Democrat that Mr Trump could beat – despite the deep bank of the party of governors, senators and other younger officials. By standing on it Re -election searchThan bend abruptly under pressure from his own partyMr Biden left Democrats behind to make a presidential campaign of billion dollars for more than 107 days for another candidate.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced him on the card, Friends told that She would Mr. Trump has defeated if she had been given more time to campaign – the implication is that Mr Biden should have stopped the race earlier.
Other Democrats claim that if Mr Biden had previously recognized the signs of his aging and refused to run re -election, their party could have organized a robust primary race and emerged with a stronger competition to challenge Mr Trump.
Mr Biden, who hinted during his 2020 campaign that he would only serve one term, said in the BBC interview that he was willing to transfer leadership to the next generation instead of running again. “But things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away,” he said and added, “it was just a difficult decision.”
Some of his most loyal assistants have insisted that Democrats are only blamed for their loss. Mike Donilon, an old adviser, continued to claim that Mr Biden was the best chance of keeping the White House.
“Many people have terrible debates,” Mr. Donilon told an audience at Harvard University in February. “Usually the party does not lose crazy. But that is what happened – it just melts.”
In the BBC interview, Mr Biden said that he was worried about the future of global democracy as allies no longer saw the United States as a reliable leader. He noticed that Sweden And Finland Had both become at NATO during his presidency, which strengthened the alliance. “And in four years we have a man who wants to run away from it completely,” said Mr. Biden.
“I am afraid that Europe will lose confidence in the certainty of America and the leadership of America in the world,” he said.
The possibility that NATO alliance could die is a “serious concern,” he said.
“We are the only nation in position to have the capacity to bring people together to lead the world,” he said, “Otherwise you will come up China and the former Soviet Union, Russia.”
If NATO did not exist, Mr Biden asked at some point: “Do you think Putin would have stopped at Ukraine?” He added, apparently referring to Trump administration officials: “I don’t understand how they don’t understand that there is strength in alliances.”
In his second term, Mr. Trump often selected his predecessor for guilt – an analysis of the New York Times found That he called Mr Biden’s name more than six times a day on average in his first 50 days in office more than six times a day.
Sought -after Whether Mr. Trump behaved more like a prince than as president, Mr. Biden said it carefully: “He does not behave like a Republican president.”
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