Amid President Trump’s ongoing temper tantrum as he refuses to concede to President-elect Joe Biden, a few of his international allies have begun coming out of the woodwork to congratulate Biden after news outlets projected the former VP won the presidential election.
NBC News reported on Monday that Trump’s orbit has privately acknowledged the President’s loss to Biden. A person close to the White House told NBC News that reality “began to sink in that this was over when foreign leaders — who are allied with the president — began congratulating Joe Biden.”
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Johnson — who’s known as an ideological ally to Trump and is in the final phases of trying to negotiate a post-Brexit trade agreement with the European Union — had initially congratulated Biden on his election victory on Saturday.
Congratulations @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris pic.twitter.com/xrpE99W4c4
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 7, 2020
On Tuesday morning, Johnson repeated his well wishes to Biden after speaking to the President-elect.
I just spoke to @JoeBiden to congratulate him on his election. I look forward to strengthening the partnership between our countries and to working with him on our shared priorities – from tackling climate change, to promoting democracy and building back better from the pandemic.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) November 10, 2020
According to the BBC, a Downing Street spokesperson reiterated Johnson’s message by saying that the UK prime minister had “warmly congratulated” Biden and “conveyed his congratulations” to VP-elect Kamala Harris during the phone call.
“They discussed the close and longstanding relationship between our countries and committed to building on this partnership in the years ahead, in areas such as trade and security – including through NATO,” the Downing Street spokesperson told the BBC.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Days after Biden’s projected victory, Erdogan joined in on congratulating the President-elect on Tuesday in a statement. Erdogan expressed the country’s determination to work closely with Biden’s incoming administration.
“I believe that the strong cooperation and alliance between our countries will continue to contribute to world peace in the future, as it has done so far,” Erdogan said.
According to CNBC, a senior Turkish official said on Monday that Ankara would wait until legal challenges to the election results were resolved and for the outcome to be finalized. It is unclear what factored into Erdogan changing his mind.
Biden has been a frequent critic of Erdogan. In an interview published in the New York Times earlier this year, Biden was asked about his thoughts on the U.S. having nuclear weapons based in Turkey, which spurred scrutiny after Turkey’s offensive into Syria last year.
“He is an autocrat. He’s the president of Turkey and a lot more,” Biden told the Times. “What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him now, making it clear that we support opposition leadership.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Netanyahu congratulated Biden and Harris a day after the President-elect was projected to win the election. Trump has been known to see eye-to-eye with Netanyahu, and his adviser Jared Kushner headed up and touted his father-in-law’s administration’s peace deal forming official diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Congratulations @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris. Joe, we’ve had a long & warm personal relationship for nearly 40 years, and I know you as a great friend of Israel. I look forward to working with both of you to further strengthen the special alliance between the U.S. and Israel.
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) November 8, 2020
However, minutes after tweeting his congratulations to the President- and VP-elect, Netanyahu threw in another tweet thanking Trump for their supposed “friendship”
Thank you @realDonaldTrump for the friendship you have shown the state of Israel and me personally, for recognizing Jerusalem and the Golan, for standing up to Iran, for the historic peace accords and for bringing the American-Israeli alliance to unprecedented heights.
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) November 8, 2020
According to the New York Times, there was talk across the Israeli political spectrum that Netanyahu feared retribution from Trump if he embraced Biden’s projected win more wholeheartedly. Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst who the Times noted is “well sourced” in Netanyahu’s orbit, told the Times that the Israeli prime minister and his allies were in “deep denial.”
