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Former President Joe Biden rebuked Donald Trump’s handling of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s conflict with Ukraine as “modern-day appeasement” in a scathing first interview since leaving the White House in January.
The former president sat for a wide-ranging interview with the BBC in Delaware this week, his first since leaving office. In it, he addressed the state of the world, including his thoughts on his successor.
Biden responded with blistering criticism when pressed for his opinion on Trump’s behavior since taking office, including threats against Greenland, making Canada the 51st state, and acquiring the Panama Canal.
“What the hell's going on here? What president ever talks like that?,” he told the Today program’s Nick Robinson. “That's not who we are. We're about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”
Speaking on Ukraine, the former president said that his administration supplied Ukraine with “everything they needed” to provide for their independence, adding that the U.S. was prepared to offer support if Russian President Vladimir Putin further escalated the war.
Biden also rebuked the Trump administration for suggesting that Ukraine would have to cede some territory to Russia in order to secure a peace deal and end the conflict.
“It is modern-day appeasement,” Biden said, referencing the policy of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who sought to appease Adolf Hitler’s demands to avoid all-out war breaking out, which failed.
“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.”
Biden argued that it wouldn’t have “mattered” if he decided to drop out of the race for the White House sooner amid concerns over his cognitive decline in the summer of 2024.
Speaking about dropping out of the race and allowing his Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place to take on Trump in the November election, Biden remained bullish.
“We left at a time when we had a good candidate. Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away,” he said. “And it was a hard decision. I think it was the right decision. I think that… it was just a difficult decision.”
English (US) ·