Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign pounced after a viral video featuring frustrated world leaders mocking President Donald Trump circulated online. The Democratic candidate released a new attack ad saying the country needed a leader the “world respects.”
The minute-long clip begins with a supercut of diplomats and world leaders laughing at Trump, including footage from a speech at the United Nations in 2018 and this week’s video from the NATO conference in London.
“The world sees Trump for what he is: insincere, ill-informed, corrupt,” Biden says in a voiceover in the ad. “Dangerously incompetent and incapable, in my view, of world leadership.”
The ad comes less than a day after several world leaders – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (and Britain’s Princess Anne) – were shown on video at the NATO summit in London gathered around as Trump was mocked over his behaviour at the meeting.
“You just watch his team’s jaws drop to the floor,” Trudeau says in the clip. He later confirmed he had been discussing Trump (others in the group moved to distance themselves from the ridicule, including Johnson), although Trudeau said he still had a “very good relationship” with his U.S. counterpart.
The footage capped off a difficult visit for a president who had largely hoped to tout his negotiating skills and pressure his peers to pay more for the partnership’s funding.
Trump abruptly left the NATO meeting earlier than expected on Wednesday, canceling a news conference and heading home as the impeachment inquiry into his behaviour moved into a new phase. He appeared to have heard about the video, telling reporters before his departure that Trudeau was “two-faced” and suggesting the Canadian leader was simply disappointed in his request that the country contribute more money to NATO.
Biden has remained deeply critical of the Trump presidency throughout his 2020 primary campaign, repeatedly casting the upcoming election as a reckoning for American values. Both the former vice president and his son Hunter have been mentioned frequently in the impeachment inquiry since Trump repeatedly pressured the leader of Ukraine to investigate them. Neither Biden nor his son has been accused of wrongdoing.
“We can overcome four years of Donald Trump, but eight years will literally, literally begin to change the character of this nation, and we cannot let that happen,” Biden said last weekend as he kicked off his “No Malarkey” bus tour. “We cannot let that happen.”