Former President Donald Trump often used his appearances at international summits to unload insults, badger world leaders and exert his dominance over America’s traditional allies. Now, Joe Biden is using his first major foreign trip as President to prove things will be a little different under his leadership.
As Biden spends the weekend eating gazpacho and locally caught fish at the G7 Summit on the southwest tip of England before heading to Brussels to meet with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union leaders, he’s working to repair relationships strained by Trump’s unpredictable and rough diplomatic style. And he’s deploying hokey jokes to do it. When Biden stood for photographs in front of the turquoise waters of Carbis Bay on Friday afternoon, he looked at the press, cocked his thumbs to the waves, and cracked, “Everybody in the water.”