Former Vice President Joe Biden tiptoed back into the political waters Thursday penning an editorial for the New York Times, warning President Trump was sullying the country’s reputation with the rest of the world.
Biden, who became a US senator in 1973 until becoming President Obama’s veep in 2009, explained that in the 45 years he’s worked in global affairs he’s learned one simple truth: ‘America’s ability to lead the world depends not just on the example of our power, but on the power of our example.’
Trump, so far, hasn’t lived up to that bar, according to Biden, who may be mulling a 2020 presidential run.
Former Vice President Joe Biden wrote an editorial for the New York Times warning that President Trump’s behavior may be hurting America’s reputation in the world
Joe Biden, seen in July speaking to Senate pages on Capitol Hill, hasn’t closed the door on a 2020 presidential run and has periodically spoken out against President Trump
Former Vice President Joe Biden (left) photographed with comedian Amy Schumer (right) the cousin of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, N.Y., is tiptoeing back into politics again
While former Vice President Joe Biden (left), photographed with his wife Jill Biden (right), is enjoying retirement from public office, he pokes his head up every once in awhile
‘This has stood as the foundation of American foreign policy throughout my political career – until recently,’ he wrote.
Biden pinpointed a number of times in the Trump presidency where he thought the president’s behavior diminished America’s standing in the world.
There was a speech in July when Trump said, ‘The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.’
The former vice president said, ‘No American political figure has so narrowly defined our interests since the period between the world wars,’ saying Trump’s words made it sound like ‘us’ versus ‘them.’
Then there was Charlottesville, where Biden suggested Trump failed to act.
‘Mr. Trump’s shameful defense of the white nationalists and neo-Nazis who unleashed hatred and violence in Charlottesville, further abnegated America’s moral leadership,’ Biden wrote. ‘Not since the Jim Crow era has an American president so misunderstood and misrepresented our values.’
Biden then turned to President Trump’s muddled decision on DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which was an executive order signed by President Obama.
Trump rescinded it, kicked it to Congress, then said he’d look at it again, while he’s maybe-possibly crafted a deal for the Dreamers with the Democrats as of last night.
Biden just found the whole thing to be wrong.
Trump’s order, he wrote, ‘betrays an unnecessary cruelty that further undermines America’s standing in the world.’
The former veep had some ideas about how to turn the ship around.
‘Reclaiming our values starts with standing up for them at home – inclusivity, tolerance, diversity, respect for the rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press,’ he wrote. ‘If these are the democratic principles we wish to see around the world, America must be the first to model them.’
Biden also noted the importance of speaking up to other world leaders when their treatment of their citizens falls short.
‘We can meet our security imperatives without giving a green light to dictators who abuse universal human rights,’ Biden argued.
His last point was that the country needed to ‘stand firm gainst foreign powers that celebrate a perceived withdrawal of American leadership as an opportunity to increase their influence,’ namely: Russia.
Biden concluded his latest editorial on a higher note, saying that the United States remains the country in the best position to shape the direction of this century.
‘But to succeed, we cannot abandon the tenets that we fought so hard to defend over the past seven decades – ideals that magnified American leadership and produced the greatest increase in global prosperity in history,’ he said.
He left his readers with one more warning.
‘You cannot define Americans by what they look like, where they come from, whom they love or how they worship,’ he wrote. ‘Only our democratic values define us. And if we lose sight of this in our conduct at home or abroad, we jeopardize the respect that has made the United States the greatest nation on earth.’
Biden had already popped back into politics several times since leaving office in January.
Last month he penned an editorial for the Atlantic expressing disgust at Trump’s handling of the racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which had left one counter-protester dead.
‘We have an American president who has emboldened white supremacists with message of comfort and support,’ wrote Biden.
He also hinted it was Trump’s controversial pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio that motivated him to pen the piece.
‘Now he’s pardoned a law-enforcement official who terrorized the Latino community, violated its constitutional rights, defied a federal court order to stop, and ran a prison system so rife with torture and abuse he himself called in a “concentration camp,”‘ Biden described.
The former vice president has left the door slightly open for a 2020 presidential run against Trump, telling NPR, ‘I have no intention of running for president, but I’m a great respecter of fate,’ the former vice president said. ‘I don’t have any plans to do it, but I’m not promising I wouldn’t do it.’
Since leaving office he’s been involved in a number of Biden-branded projects including the Biden Foundation, the Biden Cancer Initiative, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and the University of Delaware’s Biden Institute for domestic initiatives.