President Biden’s first term in office has been marked by several foreign policy challenges, with some experts giving the president low marks as he seeks a second term in November.

‘From the catastrophic surrender of Afghanistan to the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine to the savage Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, President Biden’s foreign policy has consisted of unanticipated disasters to which his administration has responded ineptly,’ Victoria Coates, the vice president of national security and foreign policy at The Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital.

The comments come as Biden continued to confront several complex global challenges, including ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, continued attacks of U.S. troops by Iranian proxies, and the growing threat of China.

Given the volume of challenges faced by the president in his first term, some experts have lauded his handling of foreign policy challenges, especially when compared to his most likely challenger in this year’s election, former President Donald Trump.

‘Trump’s encouragements to Putin and attempt to blackmail [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy by withholding weapons from Ukraine (for which he was impeached by the House of Representatives), more than anything Biden did, led to the Russian invasion of Ukraine,’ David Tafuri, a foreign policy analyst who served as a foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign, told Fox News Digital last week. ‘Now, the front line for protecting democracy and rule of law runs through eastern and southern Ukraine.’

That front line was solidified by solid anticipation of the looming threat by Biden, Tafuri argued, noting that the president began readying Ukraine for a potential invasion months in advance.

‘This gave Ukraine and its allies time to prepare for the invasion, which proved crucial in Ukraine’s early success in defending Kyiv as well as most of the territory that Russia thought it would be able to occupy,’ Tafuri said. ‘Biden led NATO to work more collaboratively than it has in decades to provide billions of dollars in aid and sophisticated weapons systems to Ukraine, again flustering Russia’s intentions.’

But not everyone is sold on Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine, especially as the war drags on and the Ukrainian resistance shows potential signs of faltering.

‘Biden never authorized a sufficient amount of weaponry to Ukraine to win, opting for virtue signaling instead, or in his words, simply ‘doing something,’’ Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst, former senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency and author of ‘Putin’s Playbook,’ told Fox News Digital.

According to Koffler, the Biden administration has lacked a clear strategy to combat Russian aggression from the start, instead opting to ‘throw billions of dollars of weaponry to Ukraine and talk smack about Putin.’

‘Weaponry and technology don’t win wars – we learned it in Afghanistan and many other places. Putin is not afraid of words – he fears action,’ Koffler said. ‘Biden announced in the very beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that he will not authorize U.S. troops deployment into the theater to help Ukraine. It is insanity to give away a key deterrence element.’

Reached for comment by Fox News Digital, a White House National Security Council spokesperson pushed back against the idea that U.S. weapons aid has been insufficient to help Ukraine, pointing to American aid as being instrumental to Ukraine’s success in the Battle of Kyev, where Ukrainian forces beat back Russia’s initial invasion of the capital city in early 2022. The spokesperson also pointed to successes in the battle for Kharkiv and the retaking of more than 50% of seized Russian territory by Ukrainian forces, arguing U.S. weaponry was instrumental to the achievements.

‘Assuming Congress passes the president’s national security supplemental request, in 2024, we will enable Ukraine to both continue to conduct offensive operations to retake its sovereign territory and to strengthen its defenses against Russian attacks,’ the spokesperson said. ‘That includes creating and defending lanes for shipping in the Black Sea, and degrading Russian capabilities throughout the territory Russia occupies in sovereign Ukraine. Our aim through the totality of these efforts is to improve Ukraine’s standing on the battlefield and put Ukraine in the best position to win the war.’

Koffler also questioned the idea that Trump withheld weapons from Ukraine, noting that Trump was actually ‘the first one who authorized lethal military assistance to Ukraine.’

As part of Trump’s 2020 budget request to Congress, the former president did request $250 million in lethal aid for Ukraine that included Javelin anti-tank weapons, according to a 2019 report from Defense News, a weapon that would eventually become critical in the early days of the fighting against better equipped Russian forces. Meanwhile, the Biden administration at one point froze a $100 million aid package to Ukraine that included lethal weapons, a June 2021 Politico report noted, a move that came just months before Russia’s eventual invasion of the country.

All told, Koffler argued that Biden’s Russia policy has amounted to no more than ‘virtue signaling,’ while Trump’s policies were ‘based on real actions that sought to deter Putin.’

‘Most importantly, Biden’s policy of pushing Ukraine into NATO was a death sentence to Ukraine,’ Koffler said. ‘To think that Putin would fail to enforce his version of the Monroe Doctrine and allow NATO to absorb Ukraine, on which Russia relied for its security for centuries, was not simply incompetent. It amounted to signing Ukraine’s death sentence.’

But the administration’s struggles haven’t been contained to Ukraine, Coates noted, pointing to the U.S.’s ‘catastrophic surrender of Afghanistan’ and the president’s failure to ensure sufficient investment in defense by European allies.

‘He has continued to tolerate the insufficient defense spending and investments by the largest EU economies that President Trump has rightly decried, leaving American taxpayers footing a disproportionate percentage of the cost of the war,’ Coates said.

Meanwhile, Bill Roggio, the managing editor of Long War Journal, argued that the administration has also seen its fair share of struggles in the Middle East, telling Fox News Digital that Biden’s ‘general policy’ in the region has been to ‘disengage.’

‘I think the administration has a policy of wishful thinking,’ Roggio said. ‘It believes it can impose its will on the Middle East when the exact opposite is happening. Afghanistan is an example of this, to believe that withdrawing from Afghanistan would solve the problem of terrorism, and we saw how that went. The Taliban had a different take on that.’

Roggio also pointed to the continued attacks on U.S. forces by Iran-backed proxies, arguing that the administration’s actions to deter the attacks have been insufficient.

‘This administration believes it can go after the proxies themselves, but on a very limited basis, in order to restore deterrence, but they’re not getting to the root cause of the problem,’ Roggio said.

That root cause is the ‘Iranians themselves,’ argued Roggio, requiring the administration to target the country’s assets throughout the Middle East.

‘If the administration was serious about attempting to restore deterrence, it would go after the Iranian assets themselves, not just the proxies,’ Roggio said. ‘The members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard destroy Iranian intelligence ships that are providing targeting information.’

‘This doesn’t have to be strikes inside of Iran,’ Roggio added. ‘Iran has a lot of assets throughout the Middle East and we can go after that. That’s what needs to be done.’

But a White House National Security Council spokesperson defended the administration’s record on Iran, pointing out that the U.S. has administered over 55 sanctions on Iran that have targeted over 550 individuals and entities, continued oil seizures to enforce existing Iran sanctions, and indicted leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for terrorism and other charges.

Andrew Bates, the White House deputy press secretary, also pointed to Biden’s work to secure additional national security funding to target Iran, noting that the administration is seeking to cut off Tehran’s financial support for Russia and help Israel strengthen its defensive capabilities against Iran and groups backed by the country, arguing that a small group of Republicans in the House have worked to delay the critical aid.

Away from the battlefields of the Middle East and Europe, Biden has also been forced to confront the growing threat posed by China. Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, believes the president has handled relations with China well, telling Fox News Digital last week that Biden has facilitated a ‘more functional and more stable’ relationship with the country and has ‘not given up anything that matters’ during tense negotiations.

Bremmer pointed to the fact that Biden has maintained tariffs on China at the level they were under Trump and has also secured export controls on ‘semiconductors, cloud computing, the CHIPS Act and the chips agreement with the Netherlands, South Korea and Japan.’

‘That is coordinating U.S. industrial policy and probably the most strategically important part of the advanced economy,’ Bremmer said.

But Koffler also pushed back on the idea that the administration has been successful in China, telling Fox News Digital that deals the president has struck with the country on climate change have been a ‘fiasco’ and only served to benefit China’s communist-led government.

‘Team Biden through regulations seeks to compel Americans to buy more electric cars that are powered by lithium-ion batteries and fewer cars that run on gasoline,’ Koffler said. ‘The U.S. is rich in oil and China controls 58% of the global production of lithium compounds and dominates the electric vehicle supply chain. So, Biden effectively seeks to help grow China’s economy and stifle the U.S. economy. The impact of these policies on U.S. national security will be profound.’

Meanwhile, Koffler pointed out that the crisis at the southern border has also benefited China, allowing the country to potentially sneak in people hostile to U.S. interests.

‘On Biden’s watch, record numbers of Chinese are pouring into the United States through the southern border, which Biden unsealed when he took over the presidency after Trump,’ Koffler said. ‘More than 24,000 Chinese have entered the U.S. illegally in 2023. It is almost certain that the CCP has dispatched a good number of them.’

Senate Democrats are celebrating a hard-fought win on Tuesday after passing a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that President Biden had requested for months, but House GOP leaders are signaling that the victory could be short-lived.

‘Right now, the Senate is the birthplace of poor policy. The lack of serious border security measures in this foreign aid package shows how disconnected this bill is from reality,’ Republican Policy Committee Chairman Gary Palmer, R-Ala., the No. 5 House Republican, told Fox News Digital. 

‘The Senate has ignored the House of Representatives and the will of the American people this entire Congress. The American people… want the southern border secure.’

Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., meanwhile, warned that the House would not simply ‘rubber stamp’ whatever Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., presented and said any aid package ‘must secure our own borders’ as well.

‘Americans elected our majority with a mandate to get Biden’s border crisis under control, and we will not abandon that directive to rubber stamp a foreign aid package that the Schumer Senate rammed through overnight,’ Emmer told Fox News Digital.

Twenty-two Senate Republicans joined all but three leftist lawmakers to pass the supplemental aid bill after debating it through the night. But even before it passed early on Tuesday morning, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., signaled it may not even get a vote in his chamber.

‘The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America’s own border before sending additional foreign aid around the world. It is what the American people demand and deserve,’ Johnson said in a Monday night statement. ‘Now, in the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters.’

A source close to Johnson confirmed to Fox News Digital the speaker does not intend to put the package up for a vote in the House, at least ‘not in its current form.’

Meanwhile, the GOP senators leading opposition to the bill already began re-calibrating their focus on pressuring the House not to act even before it passed the Senate.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., spoke on X Spaces on Monday evening with X owner Elon Musk, former 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and fellow supplemental aid critic Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, where Johnson conceded the package was likely to pass.

‘We can get to the House, get them to stop this,’ he added.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, responded to Johnson’s statement on the bill with his own brief reaction, ‘This is good. We gotta hold the line.’

The Senate bill came together quickly after an earlier version, a $118 billion aid package that also included border and immigration reforms, fell apart despite months of sensitive bipartisan negotiations. 

Republicans in the House and Senate had closed ranks and demanded the Biden administration do something about the border crisis before they could support aid to Ukraine, which has become an increasingly polarizing issue within the GOP.

But key Republican leaders lambasted the deal soon after it came out, claiming it did not go far enough to stop the flow of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Johnson led House Republicans in insisting that only an executive order by President Biden could fix the crisis.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, urged Johnson to let the House vote on the Senate’s bill in his own statement Tuesday. He also accused Republicans of kowtowing to former President Donald Trump, who had publicly urged them to oppose the Senate’s bipartisan deal.

‘The House may never consider this critical bill because Speaker Johnson and other Republicans, many of whom claim to support our allies, live in fear of Donald Trump and his MAGA acolytes, a group that openly celebrates Putin and roots for Russia,’ Himes said.

‘Speaker Johnson, I was with you in the White House, one day after taking the gavel, when you said we would pass an aid package for our allies. If your words mean anything, let the House vote.’

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., vowed to use ‘every available legislative tool’ to get the bill passed. 

‘All options are on the table,’ Jeffries said. ‘And what is clear is that there are more than 300 bipartisan votes in the House of Representatives to pass the national security bill today.’

The House Judiciary Committee is in talks to have Special Counsel Robert Hur potentially testify on Capitol Hill after releasing his report on President Biden’s handling of classified documents, Fox News Digital has learned.

Two sources told Fox News Digital that House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan’s committee is looking at late February or early March for possible dates for Hur to testify.

House Republicans appear poised for a lengthy probe into Hur’s findings after he released a 388-page report clearing President Biden of wrongdoing despite having ‘willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.’

Hur said Biden came off ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’ and that ‘it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.’

Republican lawmakers have argued that Hur’s decision not to recommend charges against Biden is an example of the two-tiered justice system in the U.S. It’s also spurred speculation over whether the 81-year-old president is unfit for office.

Jordan, R-Ohio, along with House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and House Ways & Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday calling for him to release the transcripts and recordings of Biden’s interview with the special counsel’s office.

In the letter, they accused Biden of lying at a press conference after the report’s release when he said, ‘I did not share classified information. I did not share it’ when asked whether he disclosed the sensitive information to his ghostwriter. 

‘As explained to Mr. Hur in October, there is concern that President Biden may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business dealings,’ they wrote.

‘Further, we seek to understand whether the White House or President Biden’s personal attorneys placed any limitations or scoping restrictions during the interview that would have precluded a line of inquiry regarding evidence (emails, text messages, or witness statements) directly linking the President to troublesome foreign payments.’

The Judiciary Committee’s discussion with Hur is likely to come within days of Hunter Biden’s closed-door deposition in front of Jordan and Comer’s panels, the sources said.

The president’s son is sitting down with impeachment inquiry investigators on Feb. 28.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and DOJ for comment on Hur’s potential testimony.

More than half of Americans believe President Biden got ‘special treatment’ in the special counsel investigation into his mishandling of classified documents, according to a new poll.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 53% of Americans believe Biden got off easy because he is president. Roughly 29% of Democrats also agreed Biden got special treatment.

The results come after Special Counsel Robert Hur chose not to recommend charges against Biden for mishandling classified documents, in part because Biden could present himself to the jury as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

Hur’s report went on to describe significant memory issues for Biden, saying the president could not remember when his son, Beau, died. He also failed to remember what years he served as vice president under President Obama.

Biden’s age and mental capacity have long been top issues for voters. Polls have found that large majorities of Americans believe he is too old to run for office, and Tuesday’s Reuters poll is no different. Roughly 78% of respondents said he is too old to serve a second term, and 71% of Democrats agreed.

Ipsos conducted the poll from Feb. 9 through Feb. 12, surveying 1,237 U.S. adults. The poll used the probability-based Knowledge Panel to ensure respondents represented the U.S. population. The poll advertised a margin of error of 2.91%.

Biden and the White House have dismissed concerns about his fitness for office. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated on Monday that the president’s upcoming physical exam will not include a cognitive test.

Jean-Pierre stated that Biden’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, believes Biden proves his cognitive ability ‘every day [in] how he operates and how he thinks.’

Biden himself attempted to laugh off his memory issues on Monday. Delivering remarks at the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference, Biden spoke about his bipartisan infrastructure law.

‘After devastating floods, tornadoes, wildfires and hurricane, we’re going to keep working together to respond, to rebuild and boost resilience to extreme weather. My administration is also helping install rooftop solar to build a national network of electric vehicle charging stations for revitalizing fenceline communities smothered by the legacy of pollution like where I lived in Claymont,’ Biden said, referring to where his family moved in Delaware during the early 1950s. 

‘What I didn’t realize, and I’ve been around, I know it don’t look like it, but I’ve been around a while. I do remember that,’ Biden said, garnering laughter and applause.