Former President Biden blasted President Trump in a new interview over how his successor handled a combative meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office earlier this year.
“I found it sort of beneath America in the way that took place,” Biden said in a sit-down discussion with the BBC that aired Wednesday, his first major interview since leaving office.
Trump invited Zelensky to the White House in February to discuss a rare minerals deal seen as a crucial step toward a peace agreement in Ukraine’s war with Russia that has stretched on for more than three years. The Ukrainian leader left after the blowup with no resolution.
Trump and Zelensky met again face-to-face in Rome last month before Pope Francis’s funeral. The White House deemed the follow-up a “very productive discussion,” and the mineral agreement was finally signed last week.
But Biden expressed alarm in the BBC Radio 4 interview, which took place in Delaware, about the Trump administration’s tone toward foreign policy during his second term.
“The way we talk about now that, ‘it’s the Gulf of America,’ ‘maybe we’re going to have to take back Panama,’ ‘maybe we need to acquire Greenland,’ ‘maybe Canada should be a [51st state]’,” Biden said. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“What President ever talks like that? That’s not who we are,” he added.
Biden, 82, withdrew from the 2024 race last July, staving off a rematch against Trump. Vice President Harris, who became the Democratic presidential nominee, would go on to lose to the current president.
