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In his first broadcast interview since leaving office, the former president criticized several of President Trump’s actions and defended his withdrawal from the 2024 campaign.
May 7, 2025, 8:35 a.m. ET
In his first broadcast interview since leaving the White House, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. condemned President Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine and his dealings with global allies, and defended the timing of his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential campaign.
Mr. Biden did not mention his successor by name in the interview with the BBC. But in a departure from an unwritten rule of former presidents, he criticized some of Mr. Trump’s actions as president — including his combative meeting in the Oval Office with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in February.
“I found it sort of beneath America in the way that it took place,” Mr. Biden said of the meeting during the interview, which was recorded on Monday in Wilmington, Del., and broadcast on Wednesday. He also pointed to calls from Mr. Trump to rename the Gulf of Mexico, take back the Panama Canal and acquire Greenland.
“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are,” Mr. Biden said. “We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”
Mr. Biden called the Trump administration’s proposal that Ukraine cede Crimea to Russia as part of a peace plan “modern day appeasement.” Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Biden said: “Anybody that thinks he’s going to stop is just foolish.”
Mr. Biden was asked whether he thought he should have dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign earlier. Mr. Biden announced his exit from the race on July 21, about 100 days before the election. “I don’t think it would have mattered,” he told the interviewer, Nick Robinson.
