‘Biden won’t make it’: European politicians shocked by US president’s debate failure | US Elections 2024

European politicians, already mired in multiple crises, were shocked and dismayed by Joe Biden’s meandering performance in Thursday’s presidential debate, aware that a second Trump term was that much closer — with all that implications for the rise of populism on the continent, the future of NATO, as well as for Ukraine and the Middle East.

Voices of despair came from across the mainstream political spectrum, interspersed with strange calls for Europe to prepare even more intensely for Trump’s second coming.

“American democracy killed before our eyes by gerontocracy,” posted on X Guy Verhofstadt, MEP and former Belgian Prime Minister.

CDU foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen said: “This night will not be forgotten. Democrats must now reconsider their choices. And Germany must prepare at full speed for an uncertain future. If we do not take responsibility for European security now, no one will.”

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski gave the most emphatic advice on the importance of succession planning. “Marcus Aurelius was a great emperor, but he squandered his succession by handing over to his son Commodus (the Gladiator). His disastrous reign triggered the decline of Rome. It is important to manage your path into the sunset.” It is unclear whether Barack Obama or Biden has been chosen to play the role of Aurelius.

Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the Americas program at the think tank Chatham House, who is deeply immersed in Democratic politics, struggled to make Biden’s defense, although she said she considered his political performance strong.

“It is universally acknowledged that this has been a very difficult debate,” she said. “President Biden got off to a very slow start and struggled throughout the debate – admittedly, in a very difficult format. Standing in a room for 90 minutes without any audience is exhausting and that’s not what President Biden has been able to deal with. »

Although she accused Trump of engaging in a debate devoid of any factual basis on virtually every issue, she said the debate would “leave most Americans in despair.”

In a tweet, she was more direct, saying: “America and Americans are better when they see a problem, take hold of it, and find a solution.” Make it happen.”

Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank and former Swedish prime minister, said Biden’s performance was so bad that the six warnings issued by ECFR on Trump’s foreign policy were “now a reading OBLIGATORY “.

One warning is that a deeper nightmare lies behind the potential foreign policy shocks Trump could unleash. Bildt said an international coalition “could emerge as a framework for European populists to establish special ties with Trump’s Washington. Trump’s re-election could well embolden the populist right in Europe to further obstruct common EU policies and initiatives.”

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann of the German liberal FDP party told the Rheinische Post: “The fact that a man like Trump could become president again because the Democrats are unable to present him with a strong candidate would be a historic tragedy that the whole world would feel.

Indeed, one of the messages that came directly to the White House was that this was not just about America but about the whole world.

In Italy, former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said simply: “Joe Biden can’t do it.” He wrote on X that Biden had served the United States with honor, adding: “He doesn’t deserve an inglorious end, he doesn’t deserve one. Changing horses is everyone’s duty.”

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry did not respond to Trump’s ominous comments during the debate that kyiv had received too much military aid from the United States and his reference to Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a “sellout.”

Trump reiterated his claim that if he were president in 2022, Russia would not have launched a full-scale invasion, and he said a peace deal would be reached between his election in November and his inauguration in January. Moscow feigned indifference, saying Vladimir Putin had not woken up specifically to watch the debate.

The Russian official press is less lenient. “Biden repeatedly misspoke and stuttered. Democrats have already called his performance a failure,” the official RIA news agency concluded, while leaving Trump immune from any criticism.

In the UK, Rishi Sunak said the only debate he was interested in was the one he was having with Keir Starmer over Labor’s plans to raise taxes.

The silence came from David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, whose imminent term is set to be defined by America’s choice in November. He has made strenuous efforts to address every nuance of republicanism and even argued that Trump may not be as bad as some had predicted.

But one of Lammy’s closest allies, Ben Rhodes, who was one of Barack Obama’s longest-serving advisers, said: “Think about what this debate has been like for people and leaders around the world… Telling people they didn’t see what they saw is not the right way to respond to this. »