Joe Biden has attacked Donald Trump’s comments on the US pulling out of the Nato military alliance as “dumb”, “shameful” and “dangerous” in a blistering speech attacking Republican opposition to legislation partly aimed at providing support for Ukraine in its stand against a Russian invasion.
Trump’s remarks about encouraging Russia to attack Nato allies who did not contribute what Trump called their fair share of Nato funding have set off alarm bells across Europe among leaders who eye the prospect of a second Trump presidency with growing disquiet.
In a speech after the foreign aid bill – which also includes aid to Israel and Taiwan – passed the Senate, Biden urged reluctant Republicans to pass the legislation in the Republican-controlled House.
“Supporting this bill is standing up to Putin,” Biden said. “Opposing it is playing into Putin’s hands.”
Biden then attacked Trump for his encouraging of Republicans in the House to refuse to support the bill and for his comments about Russia and Nato.
“Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that? The whole world heard it,” he said. “The worst thing is, he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will.
“For God’s sake it’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous. It’s un-American. When America gives its word it means something, so when we make a commitment, we keep it. And Nato is a sacred commitment.”
The passage of the bill through the House, however, looks far from assured despite the president’s urging and its hard-won success in the Senate. Mike Johnson, the hard-right Republican House speaker, in effect rejected the aid package because it lacked border enforcement provisions.
“The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world,” he said, adding: “In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”
Many see such sentiments as richly ironic given it was Johnson and his House Republicans who – under pressure from Trump and his allies – tanked an earlier version of the aid legislation which included a bipartisan immigration deal intended to tackle the US-Mexico border crisis.
Conservatives had insisted recently that the foreign aid package must be tied to border security measures but with immigration poised to play a critical role in the November elections and Trump increasingly certain to be the Republican nominee, the party was suddenly scared of handing Biden a domestic policy victory by trying to solve the issue.
But the crises being tackled by the legislation are not just limited to the border, Ukraine and Russia – or just Republicans.
Biden also stressed the part of the package passed by the Senate that he said “provides Israel with what it needs to protect his people against the terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and others, and it will provide life-saving humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people desperately need food, water and shelter. They need help.”
That was a message to Biden’s own party: three senators (two Democrats and the Democratic-aligned Bernie Sanders) also voted no on the bill, citing Biden’s staunch support for Israel’s military strikes in the Palestinian territories.
