Former President Joe Biden took swipes at his successor in the White House on Wednesday as he told a California audience that world leaders are asking him to “get engaged” in global affairs. 

Biden spoke for over an hour to thousands of attendees at the Society for Human Resource Management event in San Diego, where he argued President Donald Trump is destroying his legacy, including at NATO, while being careful to avoid mentioning the Republican leader by name. 

Recommended Stories

• Ron DeSantis claims Mamdani makes ‘de Blasio look like Ronald Reagan’
• Martina Navratilova defends J.K. Rowling, slams 'Fantastic Four' star in ongoing trans rights debate
• Border czar Tom Homan calls for DOJ investigation into CNN over ICE tracking app

“We strengthened NATO in a significant way,”  Biden said of his work as president from 2021 to 2025. Now, he said, “I’m getting calls — I’m not going to go into it, I can’t — from a number of European leaders asking me to get engaged.” 

While acknowledging that he is “not actively involved with NATO issues,” Biden said he is still giving out “advice” to global leaders navigating Trump’s America First approach to foreign policy. 

“Many of the things I worked so damn hard [on] that I thought I changed in the county are changing so rapidly,” the former president said, in an apparent reference to Trump’s rollback of several Biden-era policies.” 

Trump has long expressed concern that the United States shoulders the burden of financing NATO, and the president has pressured partners for years to step up their own military spending and reduce reliance on the White House for security.

However, Trump hailed the alliance last week at a NATO summit, saying he was with partners “all the way” after allies agreed to increase their defense spending from the minimum 2% target of GDP to 5% over the next decade. 

Trump hailed the $1 trillion commitment as “a monumental win” for the U.S.

As Biden touted his legacy with NATO, he also revealed that he’s writing a “500-page” memoir, telling the crowd that he has been “working like hell” to finish the book. 

Biden additionally claimed he’s fielding calls from lawmakers across the aisle begging for his advice. 

“I’m also dealing with a lot of Democrats and Republican colleagues calling me, wanting to talk — not because they think I have the answer, just to bounce things off [me],” he said. 

“How can you just walk away?” Biden said of his continued involvement in politics. 

Biden has ventured out into public for just a handful of events over the past few months, including appearances at Harvard, Pope Francis’s funeral, a Chicago speech on Social Security, and a Juneteenth event last month. He has stayed largely out of the limelight since leaving office in January amid a slew of controversies, including over recent revelations of a cancer diagnosis, and concerns from some Democrats that his continued presence in the public arena could be damaging to the party. 

When Biden publicly disclosed in May that he had an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, Republicans expressed concerns that the former president had concealed the diagnosis from the public for years in order to mount a reelection campaign against Trump in 2024. 

Biden denied the claims, saying he found out in May, like everyone else. Doctors expressed “surprise” that the diagnosis was only released this year, as the advanced cancer had almost certainly developed by 2021, the start of the former president’s term in office.

Since he left office, Biden has also been criticized over his mental decline, which critics say was showcased during a 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur, and dogged him for years since he considered running for president during the 2020 election. 

BIDEN TAKES SWIPES AT TRUMP IN JUNETEENTH SPEECH

A book recently published by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’s Alex Thompson has further fueled concerns about the extent of Biden’s cognitive decline and attempts by his inner circle to shield the then-president from the public eye as he eyed a second term in the White House. 

At Trump’s direction, congressional investigations have been launched to uncover whether Biden and his aides covered up his cognitive decline. Republican lawmakers are also investigating whether the Biden White House acted unlawfully by allowing aides to use the then-president’s autopen to sign off on executive actions.