Washington, D.C. Trump doesn’t think much of Joe Biden’s work in foreign affairs. The incoming Republican president often says that the outgoing Democratic president was a weak leader who hurt American reputation around the world during his four-year term.
Biden, on the other hand, often said that his friends in other countries were sighing with relief that he had removed Trump from office in 2020. He then asked, as things turned out, very correctly, how long the return to long-held norms could be relied upon.
Something funny happened on Trump’s way back to the White House, though: the national security teams of both Biden and Trump have agreed that they need to work together because of the wars in Gaza, Syria, and Ukraine, which have put a lot of the world on edge.
It’s not clear how much these teams agree on as they deal with problems that could lead to even more chaos around the world as Trump gets ready to move back into the White House on January 20, 2025.
“The new national security team is very sure that we are dealing with people who…” Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said at a forum in California over the weekend, “President Biden has told us that it is our job to make sure this is a smooth transition on behalf of the American people.” “And we are dedicated to fulfilling that duty with all the dedication and honesty we can muster.”
There’s no doubt that Trump and his supporters haven’t stopped criticizing Biden. They blame Biden and Democrats for all the problems happening around the world.
‘For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity that they can play one administration off the other, they’re wrong, and we are — we are hand in glove.’
Rep. Mike Waltz, Trump’s national-security-adviser pick
The next president-elect blames Biden for the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, saying that he made decisions that gave Hamas and Russia more power. A few days before Bashar al-Assad’s government fell last week, Trump blamed Obama, Biden’s old boss, for not following through on his own “red line” when Assad used chemical weapons against civilians in 2013 and killed hundreds of them, making it easier for Islamic militants to take over the country.
But even though Trump is lecturing Biden, officials on his team say that the Biden White House has worked hard to keep Trump’s group informed and help make sure there is a smooth handoff on national security issues.
“For our enemies out there that think this is a time to play one administration off the other, they’re wrong, and we are—we are hand in glove,” Trump’s choice for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told Fox News last month. “In this change, we are all on the same team with the US.”
A Trump transition official who was not allowed to speak publicly said that while Trump doesn’t usually have good things to say about the Democratic administration, there is respect in the Trump world for how the Biden White House has shared important national security information.
When lawmakers increased government support for transitions, they wanted the new and old administrations to behave during a handover. This coordination is exactly how they wanted it to happen. Biden and Trump’s staffs both agreed that this is already the most serious handoff process since 2009. It’s better than Trump’s chaotic first takeover in 2017 and his failure to work with Biden’s team in 2021.
Trump chose Florida real estate developer Steve Witkoff to be his special envoy to the Middle East. While he was there recently meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Witkoff talked with Biden administration officials, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the private talks in public.
Sullivan was going to Israel on Wednesday to meet with Netanyahu. In turn, Waltz has been told about the Biden administration’s efforts to get a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza before Trump’s election.
Officials in the Biden administration say that the two national security teams have also worked together closely on Ukraine and Syria, but they haven’t said much about how that cooperation has looked.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House, said, “Let me put it this way: Nothing that we’re doing or saying will come as a surprise to the incoming team.” “They will elect on their own which rules they want to keep, which methods they want to keep using, and which ones they will not.”
When he was running for office, Trump made it clear that he would end the war in Ukraine fast. Early this week, he asked Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, to take action to end the fighting with Ukraine right away.
But the Biden White House has started to make the case in a quiet but public way for why Trump’s goals are in line with continuing to help Ukraine.
Trump’s social media posts on Saturday were used by Sullivan to show that Biden’s push for continued backing of Ukraine is in line with the thinking of the new president.
Trump had said earlier that day that Assad’s rule was falling apart because Russia “lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead in a war that should never have started and could go on forever.”
In the Truth Social post, Trump said, “Both Russia and Iran are weak right now. Russia because of Ukraine and a bad economy, and Iran because of Israel’s fighting success.”
Sullivan made it clear that Biden and Trump both agree that the US should not have troops in Syria and that the war in Ukraine was a major reason why Assad lost.
“He said earlier in the post that part of the reason this is happening is because of Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Sullivan said of Trump. “I think he even talked about how many Russians have died in Ukraine and how they can’t defend their client, Assad, because of this.” “And on that point, we strongly agree.”
Two days later, in Washington, D.C., Sullivan made the case for Trump to support the little-known U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, which was set up during Trump’s first term as president.
The push to reauthorize the foreign aid agency comes at a time when Trump has promised to cut the federal government’s size by a huge amount.
As part of reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration for five years, Trump signed into law the agency’s power to give $60 billion in loans, loan guarantees, and insurance to businesses in developing countries.
Sullivan said that the agency was a good way for the government and businesses to work together. However, he added, “Maybe I shouldn’t be the one making the case since I’m leaving, but I will give my advice anyway.”
“As we’ve all said, it was made possible by the Trump administration,” Sullivan said at the agency’s annual meeting. “It has become stronger since Biden took office.” And reauthorizing the DFC next year must stay a top priority for both parties.
The Biden administration told Iran, “that’ll never happen on our watch,” after Assad’s government fell that it shouldn’t speed up its nuclear program because one of its closest friends had been overthrown. The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about a sensitive subject, said that they thought the Trump team was working with them on the problem.
A government worker said that they had “good discussions” with the new government about the issue and that they thought the same policy would be carried over.
The White House said Wednesday that Biden also signed off on a new national security statement that will help the next administration of Trump see how to stop China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia from working together more.
This summer, people in the Biden government started working on the guidelines. Two other senior administration officials say it was made to be a document that could help the next administration figure out how to deal with the growing tensions between the US’s main rivals and enemies from the start.
Because the White House wants everyone to remain anonymous, one of those officials tried to reassure the new Trump team that the Biden White House effort “isn’t trying to box them in or tilt them toward one policy option or another.”
A government worker explained that the goal is to help the next government build “capacity” as it makes decisions about some of the toughest foreign policies it will have to deal with.
