In his first interview since leaving office, former president Joe Biden harshly criticized his predecessor and successor, President Donald Trump, claiming that the first 100 days in office were far from a success.
In an interview with the Today program on BBC Radio 4, Biden criticized Trump’s position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict—a conflict that Trump has expressed a desire to have concluded expeditiously—while simultaneously praising his own track record of protecting the NATO alliance. An entire year into Biden’s presidency, in early 2022, hostilities erupted.
What Trump is doing toward Putin in Russia is “modern-day appeasement,” Biden remarked. “Anybody who thinks he’s going to stop is foolish.”
The Trump administration has hinted that a potential peace deal might require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea and give up some of the territory that Russia has seized in Ukraine since its invasion in 2022.
“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,” Biden stated, stating, “I don’t quite understand.”
Ever before he took office, Trump has made it clear that he would have prevented Russia’s invasion of Ukraine if he had been president at that period.
In February, Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly criticized Zelenskyy in front of reporters in the Oval Office, implying that he was obstructing peace talks between the US and Ukraine.
With remarks like “I found it sort of beneath America in the way that took place,” Biden criticized the meeting and expressed his disbelief in Trump’s statements about topics like as annexing Greenland and adding Canada as the 51st state.
“I don’t understand what’s happening here. Does any president ever use language like that? Those are not our values, Biden remarked. “We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”
On the question of whether Trump was behaving dictatorially as president, Biden responded that Trump was not acting like a “Republican president.” An interviewer characterized Biden’s behavior as “diplomatic.”
In response to questions on his presidency, Biden emphasized his accomplishments and brushed off Trump’s frequent criticisms of his government.
“Let me tell you: when I left office, we had created more jobs than any president in the history of the United States in one term,” remarked Vice President Biden. “Our economy was roaring, 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 world, increasing trade, we regained control of what we invented… of the future of computer chips.”
When asked about Trump’s assertion that his first 100 days in office were exceptional, Biden responded, “I’ll let history judge that.” Nothing that I could find was victorious.
According to Trump, Biden “inherited” a collapsing economy in April from the previous administration, and he has since blamed Biden for the economic downturn.
If tariffs hurt the economy, “it says how bad the situation we inherited,” Trump told reporters in April when asked about the impact. According to the president, “you can even say the next quarter is sort of Biden because it doesn’t happen in a daily or hourly basis.”
