Mr Biden said he did not have any recent discussions with Trump about the negotiations that led to the Gaza ceasefire deal, for which the incoming president has sought to take credit.
As for Netanyahu, Mr Biden said he still considers him a “friend” although “we don’t agree on a whole lot lately”.
Mr Biden recounted one of his early conversations with Netanyahu after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas.
“I told them we were going to help, but Bibi, I said, you can’t be carpet-bombing in these communities,” likely in reference to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
“And he said to me: ‘Well you did it… You carpet-bombed Berlin. You dropped a nuclear weapon. You killed thousands of people because you had to in order to win a war,’” Mr Biden recounted.
Mr Biden said he also kept reminding Netanyahu “that he has to find a way to accommodate the legitimate concerns of a large group of people called Palestinians who have no place to live independently”.
Touching on the conflict in Ukraine, Mr Biden said Russia has suffered more than 670,000 wounded or dead since the invasion.
“They’re losing big time too,” he said. “It doesn’t mean they’re going to lose everything but it means they’re not going to be able to have the kind of win (Vladimir Putin) thought,” he said.
Putin wants to “re-establish the old Warsaw Pact”, Mr Biden said. “I can’t let that happen.”
