“Trump does not behave like Republican president”

In an exclusive and extremely open interview – the first ever since he left the office – Joe Biden discusses what he really thinks about the first 100 days of his successor, as well as his fears for the future when the Atlantic Alliance falls apart

It’s hard to believe that the person I welcome at the Delaware Hotel, where he launched his political career more than half a century ago, was the “leader of the free world” a little over 100 days ago.

Joe Biden is still surrounded by all the attributes of power -black SUVs, guys on safety with curly headphones, dogs -ferhan, who sent forward to sweep the explosive room. And yet he spent the last three months, watching that he believed to move him with a successor.

Donald Trump has launched the name Biden again and again – his political weapons of choice. One of the recent analyzes showed that Trump said or wrote the name Biden at least 580 times in the first 100 days. Claiming that raising rally was the Trump’s stock market at work, he later accused Sharp Falls of stocks at the Biden Stock Market.

Until this week, President Biden himself (former presidents retain their titles after they leave the post) significantly noted the convention that the former presidents did not criticize their predecessors at the beginning of their time. But from the moment we shook hands, it is clear that he decided to say too.

In a dark -syn costume, the former president comes smiles and relaxed, but with the decisive air of the person in the mission. This is his first interview since the exit of the White House, and he seems to be the most angered to Donald Trump’s appeal to the Allies of America – in particular, the President of Ukraine, Lodimir Zelensky.

“I found it under America as it happened,” he says about the explosive oval office between Trump and Zelensky in February. “And what we are talking about now,” this is the Bay of America “,” we may have to take on Panama “,” We may need to buy Greenland, “perhaps Canada should be (51 state).” What the hell is going on here?

“What the president is talking about?

After a little over 100 days of Trump, which fills the actions, there was no lack of targets for President Biden to choose from.

But its main problem appears to be on the international stage, not on the inner: that is, the threat he believes is now facing the Alliance between the US and Europe, which he has put it, provides peace, freedom and democracy for eight decades.

Before our interview, which took place a few days before the 80th anniversary of Ve Day, Biden chose a big gold coin out of his pocket and pressed it against my hand. It was a souvenir last year’s honoring D-Day. Biden believes that the performance he performed on this beach in Normandy is one of his most important. In it, he stated that the men who fought and died, “knew – on the borders of any doubts – that there are things that should be fought and die.”

I ask him if he feels the victim’s message, threatens to forget in America. He does not respond, but yes, management. According to him, this is a “serious concern” that the Atlantic Alliance dies.

“I think it is to change the modern history of the world if it happens,” he says.

“We are the only nation that is able to unite people (to) lead the world. Otherwise you will have China and the former Soviet Union, Russia, have intensified.”

Now more than if -either before this alliance calls into question. This week, one leading former NATO figure told the BBC that the VE celebration feels more like a funeral. President Trump complained that the US “thwarted” its allies, Vice President J. D. Vens said America is “rescuing” Europe, while Defense Minister Pete Hegset insisted that Europe “free download”.

Biden calls the key to all NATO members – the Atlantic Alliance – to force “to protect every inch of NATO with the full force of our collective power” “Holy Committee.”

“I am afraid that our allies around the world will start to doubt whether we will stay where we have always been over the last 80 years,” Biden says.

Under their presidency, both Finland and Sweden joined NATO – what he thinks made the alliance stronger. “We have done all this – and in four years we have a guy who wants to get away from all this.

“I worry that Europe will lose confidence in America’s certainty and the leadership of America in the world to fight not only NATO but also other issues that have a consequence.”

I meet with President Biden in the place where he called home in the boy, the city of Vilmington in Delaware. This is an hour and a half trip on the AMPA train from Washington, the journey he has been spent 50 years since he became a senator at the age of 30. He spent more years in the government than any other president.

He was 82 years old when he left the oval office. His age did not invite the end of close attention – “sometimes shuddering” as journalists Jake Taper and Alex Thompson describe him in his book “Original sin: drop by Biden, his cover and his catastrophic choice again.

In June last June, in June, in June, the live broadcast raised additional questions when Biden came across his words, lost his thread in the middle of the scana and somewhat embarrassed that “we finally won Medicare!”. He soon left the election campaign.

Today, Biden is still warm and charismatic, with the popular charm that made it the winner of the elections, but it is much slower, quieter and more indecisive version of the leader he once was. Having met him personally, it was difficult for me to imagine that he could serve for another four years in the White House, bringing him closer to 90 years.

I ask Biden if he needs to think about his decisions last year. He pulled out of the presidential race just 107 days before the election day, leaving Kamal Harris a limited time to gather his own company.

“I don’t think it would be important,” he says. “We left at the time when we had a good candidate, she was completely financially financially financed.

“What we tried to do, no one thought we could do,” he continues. “And we became so successful on our agenda that it was difficult to say” No, I’ll stop now “… It was a difficult solution.”

One, what is he sorry? Of course, the removal can give anyone even more likely?

“No, I think it was the right decision.” It stops. “I think … well, it was just a difficult solution.”

Biden says he went into politics to fight injustice, and to this day has not lost any appetite for the fight. Last year, at D-Day, he warned: “We live at a time when democracy is more risking around the world than at any time since the end of World War II.”

Today he expands on this: “Look at the number of European leaders and European countries that are wondering, what do I do now? What is the best route for me? Can I count on the US?” Will they be there? “

“Instead of a democracy that is expanding around the world, (this) retreat. Democracy – every generation must fight for it.”

Speaking in Chicago recently, Biden said in America “no King”. I asked him if he thought that President Trump behaves more as a monarch than constitutionally limited president.

He carefully chooses his answer. “He does not behave like a Republican president,” he says.

Although later in our interview, Biden admits that he is less worried about the future of the US democracy than before, “because I think the Republican Party wakes up to what Trump is going.”

President Biden liked his role in NATO’s leading figure, usually deploying a secret exploration to say the skeptical world in 2022 that Vladimir Putin was going to start a complete invasion of Ukraine.

Since his post, President Trump has recorded another course, saying Ukraine that it was necessary to consider refusing to the territory in Russia if it wants to end with war.

“This is a modern coincidence,” Biden says of Trump’s approach.

Putin, he said, perceives Ukraine as “part of the mother of Russia. He believes that he has historical rights to Ukraine … He does not stand that (…) the Soviet Union collapsed. And everyone who thinks he will stop is simply stupid.”

He fears that Trump’s approach can signal other European countries that it is time to concede to Russia.

However, Biden faced allegations against him against the war of Ukraine. Some in Kiev and its allies, as well as some in the UK, claim that he gave the President Zelensky enough to resist the invasion, but not enough to defeat Russia, perhaps from the fear that Putin would consider the use of nuclear weapons if he was entered in the corner.

When Putin was asked blank on TV this week, whether he would use nuclear weapons to win the war, he said he hoped they would not “need”, adding that he had the means to bring the war because he called it a “logical conclusion”.

I point to Biden that he claimed that he had no courage to go all the way to give Ukraine the necessary weapons – that Ukraine would win.

“We gave them (Ukraine) everything we need to ensure our independence,” Biden claims. “And we were ready to respond more aggressively when Putin moved again.”

He says he sought to avoid the prospects of the “Third World War, with nuclear states”, adding: “And we avoid it.

“What would Putin do if everything was really tough for him?” It continues. “Threaten the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This is not a game or a roulette.”

Vera Biden in the Atlantic Alliance of the last live president, born during World War II, is not clearly.

When he first arrived at the Oval Cabinet, Biden hung a portrait of America’s wartime leader Franklin D. Roosevelt on the wall. He was born two and a half years after the Nazis defeat into the FDR world, which helped create a world of American global leadership and solidarity. But the United States voted for the deviation of Biden’s policy and values ​​and instead approve Donald Trump’s call to put America first.

The world is changing from the fact that people, like Joe Biden, were perceived for granted.

“Every generation must fight to support democracy, everyone,” Biden says. ‘Everyone will be disputed.

“We have done it well over the last 80 years. And I am experiencing that there is a loss of understanding the consequences of it.”

This interview broadcasts further BBC Radio 4’s Today May 7. You can hear this later about BBC sounds. Listen to the full version on Political thinking with nick Robinson: Joe Biden oneAlso on the sounds of the BBC.

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