LONDON — Joe Biden said in his first post-presidential interview that President Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to give up territory to Russia amounts to “ modern-day appeasement,” a historically fraught term that refers to a failed effort to stop the Nazis from annexing land in Europe in the 1930s.
Biden told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program in remarks aired Wednesday that Trump’s statements about acquiring Panama, Greenland and Canada have bred distrust of the United States in Europe.
“What president ever talks like that?” Biden said. “That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity — not about confiscation.”
He also said it was a “difficult decision” to leave the U.S. presidential race in 2024 four months from Election Day to allow former Vice President Kamala Harris to challenge Trump. But, he added, making that move earlier as some critics had suggested “would(n’t) have mattered.”
The term appeasement refers to former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s efforts in the 1930s to appease Adolf Hitler’s moves to annex land in Europe, which failed to prevent World War II.
Trump has long dismissed the war in Ukraine as a waste of lives and American taxpayer money. Early in his presidency, Trump ordered a pause in American aid to Ukraine — then resumed it. The two countries last week signed an agreement granting American access to Ukraine’s vast mineral resources — a return on investment, Trump suggested, that could pave the way for more U.S. aid.
He has also said that Crimea, a strategic peninsula along the Black Sea in southern Ukraine that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, “will stay with Russia.”
Biden said he worried that relations between the U.S. and Europe was eroding under Trump, with NATO member nations reconsidering whether they trust the U.S.
“Europe is going to lose confidence in the certainty of America and the leadership of America,” Biden told the BBC. The continent’s leaders, he added, were asking: “‘Can I rely on the United States? Are they going to be there?’”
Of special concern, Biden said, was the administration’s proposal to let Russia keep some Ukrainian territory in an effort to strike a peace deal that would put an end to fighting.
“It is modern-day appeasement,” Biden said.
Biden said Trump’s thrashing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February was “beneath America.”
“I don’t understand how they fail to understand that there’s strength in alliances,” Biden said of the Trump administration on Monday.
Asked about Trump’s triumphant celebration of his first 100 days in office, Biden replied that he’ll let history render the judgement.
“I don’t see anything that was triumphant,” he said.
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