Biden Questions Trump’s 2nd Term: ‘What the Hell Is Going on Here?’

In his first interview since leaving office, former President Joe Biden ripped his successor on a number of topics, including his handling of the war in Ukraine, which Biden called “modern-day appeasement.”

Speaking to the BBC , the ex-president said the spectacle of President Trump’s handling of the now-infamous Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was “beneath America.” In pushing for an end to the war, Trump has adopted Russian talking points and urged Zelenskyy to give up territory.

He also criticized Trump for his executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” on government documents, as well as his comments on acquiring Greenland or making Canada into a state.

“‘It’s the ‘Gulf of America,’ maybe we’re going to have to take back Panama, maybe we need to acquire Greenland, maybe Canada should be a [51st state].’ What the hell is going on here?” Biden questioned.

He added: “What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are. We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity — not about confiscation.”

Last month, Biden, during his first speech since leaving office, ridiculed Trump for his cuts to the federal bureaucracy and sweeping executive orders, saying “nobody’s king” in America. On Wednesday, Biden said Trump is “not behaving like a Republican president,” without going into detail on what that should look like.

Biden also said he is less worried about the state of democracy in the U.S. than he was previously, though, “because I think the Republican Party is waking up to what Trump is about.’

As for Biden’s health, BBC reporter Nick Robinson said he is “still warm and charismatic,” but is a “much slower, quieter and more hesitant version of the leader he was once.” Robinson added that it was “hard to imagine” Biden could have served another term as president.

The 46th president dropped out of the 2024 race last summer after an ugly debate performance against Trump; the debate showed a slow and feeble Biden struggling to answer questions, and, at one point, declaring, “We finally beat Medicare!” The debate was so rough for Biden that his friend and backer George Clooney wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about how he needed to ditch his campaign.

When asked if he should have exited earlier and given his vice president, Kamala Harris, more time to run against Trump, Biden said, “I don’t think it would have mattered. We left at a time when we had a good candidate, [and] she was fully funded.”

Trump ultimately beat Harris in the election with an electoral vote of 312 to 226.

You can read the BBC’s full write-up of its Biden interview here.

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