Republican leaders slam Biden foreign policy on eve of NATO summit

House Speaker Mike Johnson and former President Donald Trump lashed out at President Joe Biden's foreign policy chops on Monday, with both claiming the country was worse off globally under the current administration than under Trump.

Both leaders emphasized a need to adopt a "peace through strength" approach to national security on the eve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) summit in Washington, D.C., which begins Tuesday.

Johnson said Biden's administration has been reminiscent of former President Barack Obama's eight-year tenure in the White House, which he claims has been about "appeasing and apologizing and accommodating" U.S. enemies such as China.

"The same failures we saw under Obama have happened under Joe Biden because he's empowered an out-of-touch foreign policy establishment, who has an agenda very different than the one that we need right now," Johnson told an audience at the Hudson Institute. "Obama's weakness invited aggression, and Biden's weakness has fueled that aggression like nothing we've seen since World War Two."

The House speaker also emphasized his loyalty to Trump, and lauded the former president's hard stances against China and Iran from his first term in office.

Trump attacked Biden's foreign policy history in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, claiming the country was in "serious trouble" because its president was not taken seriously on the global stage. He also questioned who was really running the country, given the president's debate performance last month.

"We're heading into World War III, in my opinion, with this man, semi-running things, because he's not running things. The people that surround the Oval Office, the people that surround the Resolute desk ... they're really running things in Washington, I suspect," Trump told Hannity. "And I'll tell you what, if we're not careful, we're going to be right in the middle of World War III and that will be a war like nobody's seen before because [of] the weaponry."

Trump's comment comes after he released his platform on Sunday for the upcoming election, which included a "return to peace through strength" approach to national security. He also previously vowed to end the war between Russia and Ukraine before his first day in office if he gets reelected in November. 

Both Republican leaders have also encouraged countries in the NATO military alliance to increase their contributions to Europe's collective defense by spending 2% of their country's GDP on defense.

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just the News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.