President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in 2020, but as he struggles through the first months of the job he cannot stop thinking of the former occupant of the Oval Office.
“If that’s Trump, then tell him I’m busy,” Biden joked Wednesday, bringing up the former president after a reporter’s phone ringtone went off as he took questions at a press event.
The moment was just one of many Biden mentions of the former president as he tries to seize the political spotlight from his predecessor.
After meeting with world leaders about the Iran nuclear threat, Biden pointedly noted to reporters that Trump was to blame for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal crafted by former Secretary of State John Kerry during former President Barack Obama’s presidency.
“I found that I think we’re continuing to suffer from the very bad judgments that President Trump made in pulling out of the JCPOA,” he said.
At the climate change summit in Glasgow last week, Biden specifically mentioned Trump and apologized for the former president withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Accords.
“I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States the last administration pulled out of the Paris accord,” Biden said unprompted. “It put us sort of behind the eight ball a little bit.”
Prior to his trip overseas, Trump was very much on Biden’s mind as the tried to link him to the Republican candidate running for governor of Virginia.
Biden mentioned the president 24 times in his speech, even in response to protesters who interrupted his speech.
“This is not a Trump rally,” Biden told his supporters who began engaging with the protesters. “We let them holler.”
Days earlier, Biden referred to Trump during a speech for the 10th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, DC, specifically referring to the election.
“It’s something like 20 percent of the —or half the Republicans — the registered Republicans: I am not your President; Donald Trump is still your President,” he said, crossing himself “As we Catholics say, ‘Oh, my God.'”
Even on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Biden was unusually focused on Trump after the former president said during a fight promotion he was willing to box the president because he would “go down very, very quickly.”
“They may not agree with everything I say, but this idea that, you know, ‘What do you want to do with Biden?’ ‘I want to box him.’ I mean — you know. I should be so lucky. You know what I mean?” he asked reporters.
The president was also reflective after he took a picture with a group of children wearing Trump hats at a fire station and referred to signs flown by Trump supporters in Pennsylvania that read “F*ck Joe Biden.”
“What of the people who died, what would they be thinking?” he asked. “They think it makes sense for us to be in this kind of thing, where you ride down the street and someone has a sign saying “F so and so”? Or — it’s not who we are.”
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