Welcome to Beg to

Differ, the Bulwerks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation

across the political spectrum from center left to center right. I'm Mona Charon

syndicated columnist and policy editor at the Bullwark I'm joined by our regulars

Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution in the Wall Street Journal, Damon Linker

of the Week, and Linda Chavez of the Niskanin Center. Our special guest this week is Eric Aileman,

former Ambassador to Turkey and Finland and under secretary of everything at a

certain point. So welcome one and all. First topic this week is President

Biden's trip. He is in Europe even as we speak and a Pew research poll has just dropped showing that the

reputation, the global reputation of the United States has rebounded with the Biden presidency. But let's start

if we can. I'm going to start with you Eric with this trip to Europe.

What should Biden's goal be?

What do you think he should try to achieve speaking to our allies and then also to Putin?

Well, my honor, of course, all, thanks for having me back.

You know, it's hard to actually improve very much on a piece that Damon had about Biden's

Mission Impossible.

I mean, on the one hand, he has a very simple task, which is to show up in Europe and not be Donald Trump.

But I think he's already to some degree after three, four months in office

already, you know, gotten whatever benefit there is to that.

And he's going to have to overcome a lot of accumulating new sort of irritants that have cropped up in the relationship, the transatlantic relationship

with our European allies.

So in the first instance, he's got to get beyond sort of irritants like the EU

...