Joe Biden launched a full-scale denunciation of Donald Trump in his first interview since leaving the White House, accusing him of conduct “beneath” the presidency.
Snubbing U.S. broadcasters and journalists, Biden sat down with the BBC on Tuesday in a return to public life that seems unlikely to be welcomed by Democrats, who blame him for their wipeout in every branch of government last November.
Unabashed, Biden refused to take any blame for Kamala Harris’ defeat or apologize for refusing to step aside much earlier in his presidency.
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In the interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today show, Biden heavily criticized Trump over his treatment of U.S. allies. Trump has publicly mused about making Canada the 51st state, taking the Panama Canal, and acquiring Greenland. He has also renamed the Gulf of Mexico, insisting it be called the “Gulf of America.”
“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are,” Biden said. “We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”
Biden, who had largely kept a low profile since exiting office, also said that Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly humiliating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February was “beneath” the U.S.
“I found it sort of beneath America in the way that took place,” Biden said.
He added that a peace deal backed by the U.S. is tantamount to “modern-day appeasement” because it would mean Ukraine would have to give up occupied land to Russia. The comment was a reference to the policy initially pursued by Britain and others in the 1930s, where nations hoped to avoid war with Nazi Germany by making concessions to Adolf Hitler.
The idea that Putin is “just gonna stop” if territorial concessions are made, Biden said, is “foolish.”
Biden was speaking in apparent response to Vance saying that the proposed peace deal would “freeze the territorial lines… close to where they are today.” Russia currently occupies Crimea and parts of Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Luhansk, Mykolayiv, and Zaporizhzhya Oblasts.
“Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America and the leadership of America,” Biden said, adding that the continent’s leaders are “wondering, well, what do I do now? […] Can I rely on the United States? Are they going to be there?”
He insisted that his administration supported Ukraine’s efforts to overcome Putin’s invasion.
“We gave them everything they needed to provide for their independence, and we were prepared to respond, more aggressively, if Putin moved again,” he said.
The 82-year-old added that Putin’s expansionist ambitions will not be satisfied with the current territorial lines. “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. I don’t quite understand,” he said.
He also scorned Trump‘s strategy on the economy, which the current president says is Biden’s when it’s doing badly, and his when it’s on the up. Overall, the U.S. economy has shrunk in the first three months of the year because of Trump‘s tariff war. “This is Biden,” Trump said in a TV appearance last week.
“Our economy was growing,” Biden said of his record. “We were moving in a direction where the stock market was way up. We were in a situation where we were expanding our influence around the world in a positive way, increasing trade.”
“I’ll let history judge that,” he said of Trump‘s first 100 days of his second term. “I don’t see anything that was triumphant.”
He also touched on dropping out of the 2024 presidential race less than four months before Americans went to the polls. He was pressed by the BBC interviewer Nick Robinson on whether he should have stepped aside sooner to allow Kamala Harris a better shot.
“I don’t think it would have mattered. We left at a time when we had a good candidate,” he said.
Biden stood by his decision when pressed. “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,” he said.
Biden is slated to appear on The View on Thursday morning alongside his wife, Jill Biden. ABC had plugged the appearance as Biden’s first interview since leaving the White House.
His latest media appearance will likely rattle some Democratic Party figures. Some party members didn’t like it when he spoke at a conference in Chicago last month, with one stating that “the country would be better served if he rode off into the sunset.”
Before the Chicago event, Biden had limited himself to appearing at a Model United Nations conference, a St. Patrick’s Day brunch, and a convention of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, where he accepted a lifetime achievement award.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for a response to the BBC interview.
