US President Joe Biden boards Air Force One prior to departure from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, June 4, 2024, as he travels to France to commemorate D-Day. Agence France-Presse
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — Joe Biden headed for France on Tuesday to mark 80 years since the World War II D-Day landings and promote America as a defender of democracy and international alliances — contrasting himself against election rival Donald Trump.
“We are the world power,” the 81-year-old Democrat said in an interview with Time magazine published Tuesday, laying out his vision of continued US leadership of an increasingly fragile post-war international order.
Biden’s trip comes as US allies fear an alternative future — one in which a comeback victory by Republican Trump in November’s US presidential election heralds a fresh wave of US isolationism.
READ: Biden slams Trump as ‘convicted felon’ for first time
“I have a fundamentally different view than Mr Trump has on a range of things,” he said, adding that US security depended on its “alliances around the world.”
“And he, Trump, wanted to just abandon them,” added Biden.
Previewing Biden’s trip, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said World War II “showed the world the value of strong alliances and partnerships,” and added that Biden “has made revitalizing our relationships a key priority.”
The US president’s schedule in France is designed to show him off in the best possible light compared to his nemesis Trump.
READ: Biden says Trump ‘won’t accept’ result of election
On Sunday, Biden will visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, where hundreds of US Marines who died in the bloody Battle of Belleau Wood during World War I are buried.
Trump called off a visit to the same cemetery in 2018 — officially because of bad weather.
But the Atlantic magazine later reported that Trump was mainly concerned that his hair would become disheveled in the rain.
Trump was also reported to have told senior staff members: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
An angry Biden has repeatedly brought up those comments in election campaign speeches — not least because his own son Beau had served in the military and he blamed his son’s death of brain cancer at age 46 in 2015 on toxins from army burn pits in Iraq.
‘Defending freedom’
Biden will also take part in the international ceremony marking the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, on Omaha Beach in Normandy.
Later in the week he will meet French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris for a visit featuring a welcome ceremony, military parade and working dinner, followed by a joint press conference.
It will finish with a grand state dinner, with Macron returning the compliment after Biden treated him to the same honor in Washington in December 2022.
The White House said the two leaders would make an announcement on cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, where China is increasingly assertive, as well as on the energy transition and nuclear energy.
But on Friday Biden has carved out time for a speech whose real audience is at home in the United States.
Biden will speak about “the importance of defending freedom and democracy” at Pointe du Hoc, a promontory overlooking Omaha Beach taken by US Rangers in one of the fiercest battles on D-Day.
Forty years ago President Ronald Reagan used the same location to proclaim that democracy was worth dying for “because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.”
The Republican also took aim at the then Soviet Union in that speech. In 2024 his words echo Biden’s determination to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
But Biden’s words will also clearly be aimed at Trump.
Biden has repeatedly called his rival a threat to democracy over Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results, his support for the January 6, 2021 Capitol rioters, and his repeated hints at unrest if he loses a second election.
“Something snapped in this guy” after 2020, Biden told a fundraiser earlier this week, in which he also branded Trump a “convicted felon” after the Republican was found guilty in his criminal hush money trial.