Biden Uses NATO Summit to Assail Trump on Foreign Policy

At his news conference, the president also acknowledged a new strategy to disrupt the growing ties between China and Russia but provided no details.

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President Joe Biden used his news conference on Thursday to remind voters that former President Donald J. Trump’s first reaction to the invasion of Ukraine was to praise President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

President Biden used the closing of the NATO summit to issue a blistering attack on Donald J. Trump’s rejection of the value of alliances, and he declared for the first time that he had developed a strategy to interrupt the growing military and technological relationship between Russia and China.

In a wide-ranging news conference being watched to see how he handled himself amid questions about his age and acuity, Mr. Biden mixed defiance of his critics with several flubs.

But the session also served as a platform for him to show a command of foreign policy, including describing in detail the decisions he has made over three and a half years that have been punctuated by wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

He took credit for warning the Europeans of an impending invasion of Ukraine in late 2021 and early 2022, and for preparing NATO to provide arms and intelligence as soon as war broke out. And he used the moment to remind American voters that Mr. Trump’s first reaction to the invasion was to praise President Vladimir V. Putin.

“Here’s what he said,” Mr. Biden added, his voice dripping with sarcasm: “‘It was genius. It was wonderful.’”

The biting comparison, with its suggestion that Mr. Trump admires only brute force and is in Mr. Putin’s pocket, was the kind of attack on his opponent that Mr. Biden’s supporters were hoping for in the debate between the two men two weeks ago but never heard.

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