Biden to call for unity, knock Trump in 2020 launch

Former Vice President Joe Biden, in his first major foreign policy address as a Democratic presidential candidate, on Thursday blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s performance on the world stage as erratic and extreme.

Trump, Biden told an audience in New York, has damaged America’s “reputation and our place in the world, and, I quite frankly believe, our ability to lead the world.”

The Republican president has unsettled Washington’s allies by withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord, a nuclear deal with Iran and a trans-Pacific trade agreement, and has also threatened to leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

For Biden, who served eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president and 35 years in the U.S. Senate, it was a much-needed return to firmer ground after weeks of having to defend his civil rights record, while allowing him to train his attention on Trump rather than other Democrats.
 
 
Kamala Harris, a black U.S. senator from California, assailed the 76-year-old Biden in last month’s Democratic presidential debate over his past opposition to forced busing as a means to integrate schools and for remarks about his willingness to work with segregationists while in the Senate more than 40 years ago.

Biden apologized here for those remarks, but he has seen some erosion in support from Democratic voters, with Harris largely reaping the benefit and the field tightening in general among those vying to win the party’s nomination to run against Trump in next year’s general election.

In his address at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, Biden criticized Trump for abdicating the United States’ leadership role in the world and argued that collective action is necessary to confront threats posed by climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and cyberwarfare.

“We must once more harness that power and rally the free world to meet the challenges facing us today,” Biden said. “It falls on the United States of America to lead the way.”

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