‘The world is laughing at President Trump’: Joe Biden highlights viral NATO video in campaign ad – The Washington Post, The Washington Post

On Wednesday, President TrumpslammedCanadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “two-faced” and abruptly canceled a scheduled news conference at the NATO summit in London after avideo surfacedappearing to show several world leaders, including Trudeau, laughing and gossiping about him.

Now, one of Trump’s domestic political opponents has capitalized on the hot-mic moment to create his own viral video.

Former vice president Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, released anew campaign adlate Wednesday highlighting the NATO video in a blistering critique of Trump’s ability to lead on the global stage. Biden’s campaign also mocked Trump’s repeated insistence that the United States requires a president who isn’t a “laughingstock,” ending the ad with a graphic that read, “We need a leader the world respects.” By early Thursday, the roughly minute- long video had been watched more than 5 million times.

“The world is laughing at President Trump,” Bidentweeted. “They see him for what he really is: dangerously incompetent and incapable of world leadership.”

The pointed ad marks the continued fallout after Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other dignitaries were caught on camera Tuesday engaging in a brief exchange apparently about Trump that quickly spiraled into an international incident. On Wednesday, Trudeau, Macron and Johnson were forced to field questions about the candid conversation and Trump was described as “the scorned child on the global playground” and “a sulking, brooding president,” The Washington Postreported.

Set to dramatic instrumental music, Biden’s ad opens with Trump grinning and flashing a thumbs up as he stands flanked by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis.

But the video quickly cuts to the Tuesday footage of the leaders at Buckingham Palace and their animated conversation.

“World leaders caught on camera laughing about President Trump,” a narrator says.

“Several world leaders mocking President Trump, ”another speaker says. The video zooms in on Macron talking before jumping to a close-up of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte mid-laugh. Other clips show Johnson and Trudeau smiling.

The ad then calls attention to other occasions where Trump has been met with derision from foreign leaders, including video of the president addressing the U.N. General Assembly last year, where his remarks were met with “audible guffaws” from audience members, The Post’s David Nakamurareported

“A president the world is laughing at,” reads all-caps text superimposed on footage from Trump’s address.

As videos of Trump play, Biden slams the president, calling him “insincere, ill-informed, corrupt, dangerously incompetent and incapable, in my view, of world leadership.”

“And if we give Donald Trump four more years, we’ll have a great deal of difficulty of ever being able to recover America’s standing in the world, and our capacity to bring nations together,” Biden says over images of himself with foreign leaders such as Trudeau and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In a Wednesday tweet, Trumpdefendedhis behavior at the summit, writing, “I got along great with the NATO leaders.”

“The Fake News M edia is doing everything possible to belittle my VERY successful trip to London for NATO, ”Trump tweeted, adding that there was“ only deep respect ”for the United States.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, hit back at Biden over his own foreign policy credentials.

“As the President has said, Joe Biden claims that foreign leaders have told him they want him to win the election. Of course they do, ”Murtaugh wrote in an email to The Post. “They want to keep ripping off the United States like they did before Trump became President.”

The viral video from Buckingham Palace offered Biden a chance to highlight a regular theme from his campaign: emphasizing his foreign policy experience, while slamming Trump’s handling of global relations. In November, Biden’s campaign touted approv from 133 foreign policy experts and former officials who supported the former vice president as the “best antidote” to Trump, The Post’s Josh Roginwrote. Days later, Biden accused Trump of “shredding our alliances” during aninterviewwith CNN’s Don

At an event in Ames, Iowa, earlier on Wednesday, Biden had declined to directly attack Trump’s NATO performance, citing his stance that presidents shouldn’t be criticized while they are on foreign soil, WHO-DTreported. “What happened in the recent NATO conference has disturbed me. Really, really disturbed me, ”he said.

But less than an hour after Air Force One delivered Trump back to the U.S. on Wednesday night, Biden dropped his ad.

On social media, the video was met with mixed reactions. Some praised Biden’s team for creating what one personcalled“the best anti-Trump ad I’ve seen yet. ”Otherswarnedthat the ad would only inspire a similar video from the Trump campaign centered on Biden’s numerous gaffes.

Viewers, however, did appear to largely agree on one thing: Trump would not be pleased.

“@ realDonaldTrump is going to explode,” one person .