It was one the starkest rebukes Biden has made of his predecessor and showed Biden sharpening his critique of Trump as the presidential campaign kicks into gear. Biden spoke to reporters from a lectern set up below a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in the White House’s State Dining Room, soon after the House Republican leadership said it would refuse to take up the $95 billion emergency defense spending bill that passed the Senate and included $60 billion for Ukraine.
At a rally in Conway, South Carolina, on Saturday, Trump said that, while president, he had told a leader of a “big” country in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that if they didn’t spend more on their own defense, he would tell Russia “to do whatever they hell they want.”
“No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator,” Biden continued. “Well, 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.”