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With a domestic approval rating of just 38%, Joe Biden is fast becoming one of the most unpopular presidents in modern U.S. history at such an early stage of a presidency. The catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal, a massive crisis on the southern border, and a Socialist-style big government economic agenda have all combined to disillusion American voters.
Is the leader of the free world though faring any better on the international stage? After all, Biden boasted on the campaign trail about “restoring” America’s standing and credibility across the globe after the supposedly reckless approach of the Trump era.
Yet after just nine months in office, the Biden administration is increasingly viewed as a disaster among U.S. partners, who haven’t taken kindly to being unceremoniously thrown under the bus after fighting alongside the United States in Afghanistan for nearly two decades.
Countless European officials have told me privately that they simply can’t trust the Biden presidency. Some are actually reminiscing about the Trump days, with a high degree of buyer’s remorse – even in Paris.
I suspect that anti-Biden sentiment in the democratic world outside the U.S. is probably highest in the U.K., where there already existed a considerable degree of skepticism even before he became president. President Trump had a significant amount of support from Brexiteers, and was seen by sections of the Conservative Party as a strong British ally.
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Trump’s administration was arguably the most pro-British since the Reagan presidency of the 1980s, when the partnership between the United States and United Kingdom was at its peak. Many leading Trump officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley were, and remain today, stalwart allies of the United Kingdom.
I have traveled twice to London in the past few weeks, meeting with dozens of officials, members of Parliament and political advisers, as well as newspaper editors, media commentators and think tank experts. I can barely recall a single positive word said about Biden and his presidency. I doubt that any American president in the modern era has been more unpopular in the U.K. with those who are directly shaping British policy.
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And the condemnation of Biden is not only on the right. One senior figure in the House of Commons told me she could not think of a single MP of any party who would stand up and defend Joe Biden after what he had done to Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan debacle has been a huge game-changer in perceptions of the U.S. presidency in Britain and across the world. Not only was Biden’s reckless handling of the withdrawal the humiliation of a superpower, but it was also a massive betrayal of dozens of…