Biden says Trump-Zelenskyy clash was ‘beneath America’

LONDON — Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s dramatic Oval Office fallout in February was “beneath America,” according to Trump’s predecessor as U.S. president Joe Biden.

In his first broadcast interview since leaving the White House in January, Biden took aim at Trump’s foreign policy record — and singled out the shouty confrontation in the White House which saw Ukraine’s president belittled by Trump and his Vice President JD Vance.

“I found it beneath America in the way that took place,” Biden told the BBC. “The way we talk about now that ‘this is the Gulf of America’, ‘maybe we’re going to have to take back Panama,’ ‘maybe we need to acquire Greenland’ … what the hell’s going on here?”

He added: “What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are.”

Trump used the February meeting in the Oval Office to accuse Ukraine’s president of being insufficiently grateful for American support. The meeting ended without an agreement, though the pair later met at Pope Francis’ funeral and the two countries have now agreed a minerals deal.

Biden branded Trump’s approach to the war in Ukraine “modern day appeasement.”

“Listen to what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin said when he talked about going from Kyiv into Ukraine. And why. He believes it’s part of mother Russia,” Biden added.

Amid signs of a U.S. retreat from its role as guarantor of European security, Biden said the future of the NATO military alliance was now of “grave concern” to him and warned “it would change the modern history of the world if that occurs.”

Asked whether Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had been right to take issue with America subsidizing European defense, Biden pushed back: “They don’t have a point. When we were attacked, what happened on 9/11? They all responded and supported us.”

Seb Starcevic contributed reporting.