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Joe Biden's challenge at his first UN General Assembly: Convince allies he's not another Trump
CNN
When President Joe Biden mounts the iconic green marble rostrum inside the hall of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, he will face an audience skeptical he really is as different from his predecessor as he likes to claim.
For world leaders who were alternately addled and amused by former President Donald Trump -- who once encountered mocking laughter from the UN crowd in the middle of his big speech -- Biden represented hope for a different era in American foreign relations. He spent his first foreign trip in June declaring across Europe that "America is back."
Yet this week he finds himself under intense scrutiny from allies who have been disappointed his election has not done away entirely with the "America First" policies Trump espoused during the former President's annual speeches to the UN. They have complained bitterly about being left out of key decisions. In increasingly public fashion, foreign officials have begun unfavorably comparing Biden to Trump -- an insult to a President who ran as the capable and experienced alternative to Trump's global tumult.
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Over the past 10 days, Vice President JD Vance put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on notice, rattled the confidence of century-old allies in Western Europe during his first foreign trip, decamped to Capitol Hill to help in delicate budget talks and delivered a spirited defense of the Trump administration’s first month to a gathering of conservatives outside the nation’s capital.