President Joe Biden is drawing a sharp contrast with his nemesis Donald Trump in Helsinki without needing to mention his name by holding an event in the same venue where Trump appeared to side with Vladimir Putin.
Hours earlier Biden said in a speech that he had strengthened the military alliance and blasted Putin. In Helsinki, which lies just 700 miles from the Russian border, he will appear in the same presidential palace with Finish President Sauli Niinistö where Trump met with Putin in 2018.
Biden landed in Helsinki Wednesday night after addressing a cheering crowd in Vilnius, on a visit meant to welcome NATO’s newest member, whose move to the alliance was driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
It was in that infamous meeting where Trump appeared to side with Russia over U.S. intelligence amid Putin’s denials of interference in the 2016 elections. ‘They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be,’ Trump said, when asked who he believed.
His explosive language came days after a dozen Russians were indicted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Trump’s own intelligence chief, former Republican Sen. Dan Coats, had to issue a statement underlining that ‘we have been clear in our assessment of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.’
‘I have great confidence in my intelligence people. But I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today, and what he did is an incredible offer,’ Trump added.
It was at the same summit that Putin gave Trump a soccer ball that may have contained a transmitter chip. With a war raging inside Ukraine, Biden’s European trip gave him the chance to turn away from his reelection campaign and focus on transatlantic politics.
His speech in Vilnius featured attestations of unity and swipes at Putin, although the NATO summit began with fuming by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about the failure to provide a timeline for his country to be invited to join the alliance.‘I’ve been so focused as president on rebuilding and revitalizing alliances, the cornerstone of American leadership in these past years,’ Biden said during meetings Wednesday.
Biden also took a veiled shot at Trump, who spoke about pulling out of NATO and harangued members for falling short of their commitments to spend 2 per cent of their GDP on defense. ‘Russia could end this war tomorrow by withdrawing his forces from Ukraine’ and ‘ceasing his inhumane attacks on women and children’, said Biden, 80, thundered during his speech.
‘Unfortunately, Russia has shown thus far no interest in the diplomatic outcome. Putin still wrongly believes that he can outlast Ukraine. He can’t believe it’s their land, their country and their future and even after all this time, Putin still doubts our staying power. He is still making a bad bet.
Trump has been continuing to attack Biden on social media from afar, during a week where he suffered a setback when the Justice Department announced it would no longer defend him in rape accuser E. Jean Carrol’s defamation case. The slams have echoes of his fulminations about the Mueller probe while it his campaign’s Russia contacts.
‘When Russian bombs began to fall, we did not hesitate to act. We rallied the world support the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their liberty and their sovereignty,’ he added.
