During a NATO summit in Brussels this past week, President Biden made some statements about Former President Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the “fractured” Republican party. The remarks came when Washington Post reporter, Anne Gearen, asked what assurances Biden could give to Western allies regarding the power Trump has among his supporters since the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Former President Trump was a frequent critic of NATO, but President Biden has reaffirmed the country’s commitment to NATO. Is there a double standard in politics when it comes to how the public treats leaders of the Republican Party versus the Democratic and Independent politicians?
What did President Biden say?
“I think it’s appropriate to say that the Republican Party is vastly diminished in numbers,” President Biden said. “The leadership of the Republican Party is fractured, and the Trump wing of the party is the bulk of the party, but it makes up a significant minority of the American people.” A Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll in April showed 36% of Americans identify as Republican. 42% of people identify as Democrats, roughly the same as a year ago. Democrats narrowly control both houses of Congress, but 27 states have Republican governors. A lot of the left associate Republicans directly with Donald Trump, and in a world where the former President is villainized no matter what he does, hating Trump is “trendy.” It is not surprising to see support for and from Republicans diminishing. This idea seems to be confirmed since Biden didn’t shy away from taking shots at former President Trump during the summit. “What’s happened in terms of the consequence of President Trump’s phony populism has happened,” President Biden said. “It is disappointing that so many of my Republican colleagues in the Senate who I know better have been reluctant to take on, for example, an investigation [into Jan. 6 riot], because they are worried about being primaried. In the end, we’ve been through periods like this in American history before where there has been this reluctance to take a chance on your reelection because of the nature of your party’s politics at the moment. I think this is passing; I don’t mean easily passing. That’s why it’s so important that I succeed in my agenda.” President Biden was then asked about his meeting with Russian President, Vladimir Putin, but declined to reveal what the pair would speak about.
Biden’s Comments about Putin
“The last thing anyone would do is negotiate in front of the world press as to how he’s going to approach a critical meeting with another adversary and or someone who could be an adversary,” President Biden said, when asked what he and Putin would be meeting about. “I’m going to make [it] clear to President Putin that there are areas where we can cooperate if he chooses. And if he chooses not to cooperate and acts in a way that he has in the past relative to cybersecurity and some other activities, then we will respond,” President Biden said. These comments came after Putin praised former president Donald Trump and called Biden a “career man” in an interview. “I believe that former U.S. president Mr. Trump is an extraordinary individual, talented individual, otherwise he would not have become U.S. president,” Putin recently said, in his first interview with a U.S. news network since 2018. “He is a colorful individual. You may like him or not. And, but he didn’t come from the U.S. establishment, he had not been part of big-time politics before, and some like it some don’t like it but that is a fact. Biden, meanwhile, is radically different from Trump because President Biden is a career man. He has spent virtually his entire adulthood in politics,” Putin said. President Biden went on to talk about Putin saying, “he’s bright, he’s tough and I found that he is, as they say when you used to play ball, a worthy adversary.” He said he hoped Putin had an interest in “changing the perception that the world has of him”. When Former President Trump announced similar things during his presidency, he would be, once again, “cancelled” for the upteenth time.
It is interesting that President Biden’s meeting with Putin is seen as this great thing with a response of “we are getting things done,” even though Biden won’t disclose the topics of the meeting. When Trump did similar things during his presidency, it was seen as sneaky and there was an uproar. The double standard is very apparent and appalling, seeing how each politician is treated differently by the public. Why did it become a trend to hate Trump? Did “cancel culture” warp the public’s view of President Trump? Is the Republican Party fractured or villainized?
