In an interview with the BBC broadcast on Wednesday, former US President Joe Biden recalled the lessons of World War II, with the 80th anniversary of the end of European hostilities being celebrated this week in European capitals and in Moscow, saying that his successor in the Oval Office represents “modern-day appeasement.”
Biden said in the interview that Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin believes Ukraine is part of Russia and that “anybody that thinks he’s going to stop” at Ukraine is “just foolish.”
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“What the hell’s going on here?” Biden said to his BBC interviewer who traveled to Delaware, the home state of Biden and aptly described him as the last living US president born during the Second World War.
The former president was quick to call out the diplomatic blunders of his successor in his first interview since leaving the White House in January.
“What president ever talks like that?” Biden said of Trump. “That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity. Not about confiscation.”
Biden was born on Nov. 20, 1942. The current American president, Donald Trump, was born July 14, 1946. While Nazi Germany surrendered 80 years ago this week, the Japanese formally surrendered on September 2, 1945, almost a year before Trump was born.
Trump became the oldest person ever elected as US President when he won the 2024 vote at the age of 78.
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“I’m worried that Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America and the leadership of America and the world, to deal with not only NATO but other matters that have a consequence,” Biden said in the interview. “I fear our allies around the world are going to begin to doubt whether we’re going to stay where we’ve always been in the last 80 years,” Biden said.
Trump has regularly blamed Biden for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began with the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“If I were president, that war would never have happened,” he repeatedly said on the campaign trail for his second term in 2024.
During his first presidency from 2017 to 2021, Trump made no demands on Putin to surrender Crimea, emboldening the Russian autocrat to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Also in his campaign in 2024, Trump said that he would end the war “within 24 hours” and would get it done even before his inauguration in January.
More than 100 days into his new term, he has had no success in his peace efforts, saying only that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would have to surrender occupied lands, and has said that a fair compromise would be that Putin does not swallow up the entire country.
Through a minerals deal signed by both country’s leadership and awaiting only the approval of Ukraine’s parliament this week, Trump has sought to recoup the $61 billion in aid granted by US Congress to Ukraine during Biden’s presidency.
“We gave them everything they needed to provide for their independence and we were prepared to respond, more aggressively, if Putin moved again,” Biden said. These are “the values that the vast majority of the American people value. Do everything we can to avoid war, but not yield to tyrants. Not yield,” he said.
Asked if he thought Trump was behaving more like a king than a constitutionally limited president, Biden replied: “He’s not behaving like a Republican president… I think the Republican Party is waking up to what Trump is about.”
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