Sitting down for a highly anticipated live interview on The View, Joe Biden assailed his successor in the White House, claiming that Donald Trump was doing a “very poor job in the interest of the United States” throughout the first 100 days of his presidency.
Additionally, the former president took a swipe at the current commander-in-chief’s fixation on him, noting that Trump only continues to bring him up because of Biden’s 2020 election victory.
“I beat him,” Biden bluntly noted.
“So it’s been 100 days, and you have waited to speak out until now. Why is now the right time for you to speak out?” View co-host Ana Navarro asked the former president, wondering what his “honest assessment” of Trump’s first three months in office.
“I think he has done, quite frankly, a very poor job in the interest of the United States of America,” the ex-president declared. “I think, you know, the greatest alliance in the history of the world is NATO, not a joke. And he’s blown it up. I was able to expand it.”
Biden added that he was worried about the “long-term” impact of Trump’s foreign policy on the world, including the president’s seemingly close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I have known Putin for over 45 years. He’s a dictator,” Biden grumbled before also taking aim at Trump’s handling of healthcare and Social Security.
Liberal co-host Joy Behar, meanwhile, brought up Trump’s “obsession” with Biden and his White House tenure, noting that the president has “mentioned you and your family and your administration at least 580 times” since entering the White House.
“ Why is he so fixated on you and blaming you for everything?” Behar wondered.
“I beat him,” Biden snarked as the audience roared with laughter. “I’m used to dealing with bullies.”
Saying she “promised” she would ask this question, Behar also brought up how Trump is “obsessed” with Biden’s use of an autopen to sign preemptive pardons for members of his family and prominent Democrats right before leaving office.
“Now he’s calling for investigations and claiming the pardons are void and vacant,” she declared, prompting Biden to react: “Oh, he’s vacant!”
After former first lady Jill Biden sat down at the table midway through the broadcast, the hosts brought up the sweeping allegations that the former president was suffering through a dramatic decline in his cognitive fitness in the final year of his term, asking the couple about the numerous books detailing these claims.
“They are wrong. There’s nothing to sustain that,” the former president replied. Mrs. Biden, meanwhile, also dismissed these books because the authors “were not in the White House with us” and “didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day” while in office.
“I think he was a great president and if you look at things today, give me Joe Biden any time,” she added to applause.
At the same time, resident conservative host Alyssa Farah Griffin pointed out that former President Barack Obama, among others, had expressed concerns about Biden’s ability to do the job for another four years.
“Can I ask what your relationship is with President Obama and how you address those concerns that they raised?” Griffin asked.
“Look, I think that the only reason I got out. The race was because I didn’t want to have a divided Democratic Party. It was a simple proposition, and so that’s why I got out,” Biden responded. “The race. I thought it was better to put the country ahead of my interests, my personal interests. I’m not being facetious. I’m being deadly earnest about that.”
After Biden defended his final few months in office, saying he did a “pretty d*mn good job,” the other hosts appeared to brush aside questions about his age and mental fitness. Whoopi Goldberg, for instance, attributed the disastrous Trump debate to merely a “bad night” for the former president.
The former first lady also objected to claims that she “created a sort of cocoon around” her husband and limited his interactions with the media to hide his condition, saying “he wasn’t hiding somewhere” and she didn’t have him “sequestered” away. She also hit back at those who compared her to Lady Macbeth.
“It was very hurtful, especially from some of our so-called friends,” she said.
The Bidens’ appearance on The View, which has long been a safe haven for the former president as this marked his 11th time on the show, appears to be part of a concerted media effort to respond to recent books about his cognitive decline and fitness while in office.
In their book Fight, which was released last month, veteran political reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes paint a picture of the battle within the White House as Biden’s age and gaffes became an increasing issue, prompting prominent Democrats to urge him to step aside and allow Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place.
Meanwhile, CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson have collaborated on the upcoming book Original Sin, which will be released later this month and is about “Biden’s decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again.” During a CNN appearance on Wednesday night, Navarro – who is also a CNN commentator – said she felt that the former president was trying to preempt the news cycle.
“There’s books that are coming out that are basically arguing that he was practically brain dead and that there was a massive cover-up by his administration,” she declared on CNN NewsNight. “And I think he wants to get ahead of it and respond and put out his version.”
Earlier this week, Politico reported that Biden had hired his former deputy press secretary Chris Meagher to help publicly defend his reputation as he looks to become more engaged publicly following Trump’s first 100 days. The View sitdown, which is his first live television interview since Trump’s inauguration, looks to be the first big test of this new strategy.
“The timing of Biden’s appearance on The View is notable because it comes after the 100-day mark, a period in which former presidents have typically avoided criticizing their predecessors,” Politico noted. “Now Biden can take on Trump more directly, the people said. It is also a venue he has often retreated to at fraught moments dating back to 2007, including his first interview after launching his 2020 presidential run and last September as the first sitting president to do so, during which he called Trump a ‘loser.’”
The interview also comes after he sat down with the BBC for an interview that was released on Wednesday, in which he tore into his successor on multiple levels.
Specifically, he called Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine give up territory to Russia in order to bring an end to the war “modern-day appeasement,” adding that he was gravely concerned about NATO potentially breaking up.
“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that?” Biden also said about Trump’s proposals to annex Greenland and make Canada the 51st state. “That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”
Source: independent.co.uk
