Joe Biden is proving to be the “laughing” stock of the NATO summit, although the embarrassing development is no laughing matter.
CNN’s Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny asked Biden a question about Vladimir Putin in Brussels, Belgium on Monday. Biden’s response was odd, to say the least.
“In a weekend interview, Vladimir Putin laughed at the suggestion that you called him a ‘killer’,” Zeleny began. “Is that still your belief, sir, that he’s a killer?”
“And I will continue the trend of asking a second question,” he continued. “Do you believe that if he does agree to cooperate, then what kind of a challenge do you find yourself in? How would you ever trust him? If Ronald Reagan said ‘trust, but verify,’ what do you say to Vladimir Putin?” Zeleny asked.
This was Biden’s rambling response. Watch below:
Biden gives *awkward* laugh in response to question about Putin. Watch:🔻 pic.twitter.com/rDXfAdlHsR
— Becker News (@NewsBecker) June 14, 2021
“Answer the first question? I’m laughin’, too,” he said to awkward silence. “They actually, I——well, look, he has made clear, that, uh—uh————the answer is, I believe he has in the past, essentially, acknowledged that he was, uh, there’s certain things that he would do or did do.”
“But look, when I was asked that question on the air I answered it honestly but it’s not much of a…” he rattled on. “I don’t think it matters a lot in terms of this next meeting we’re about to have.”
This is the best “statesman” the United States can send to a group of world leaders?
NBC recently interviewed Putin in an exclusive interview, and the Russian president laughed off Biden’s “killer” label and talked up the presidency of Donald Trump.
“Mr President, are you a killer?” Simmons asked in an interview broadcast Friday night.
In an NBC News worldwide exclusive, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with @KeirSimmons for a rare interview addressing many issues that will be on the table with President Biden later this week, including human rights and cyberattacks. pic.twitter.com/BAmVsU5dXe
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 14, 2021
“Over my tenure, I’ve gotten used to attacks from all kinds of angles and from all kinds of areas under all kinds of pretext and reasons and of different caliber and fierceness, and none of it surprises me,” Putin responded.
“So as far as harsh rhetoric I think this is an overall expression of US culture,” he said. “Of course in Hollywood, there are some underlying deep things in Hollywood – macho, which can be treated as cinematic art. But that’s part of US political culture, it’s considered normal. By the way, not here, it is not considered normal here.”
Putin also told Simmons: “Well even now, I believe that former U.S. president Mr Trump is an extraordinary individual, talented individual, otherwise he would not have become U.S. president.”
“He is a colorful individual. You may like him or not,” Putin continued. “And, but he didn’t come from the U.S. establishment. He had not been part of big-time politics before, and some like it, some don’t like it but that is a fact.”
The Russian leaders said about Biden: “He is radically different from Trump because President Biden is a career man. He has spent virtually his entire adulthood in politics.”
“That’s a different kind of person, and it is my great hope that, yes, there are some advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any impulse-based movements on behalf of the sitting U.S. president,” he added.
Another thing Putin didn’t see from Donald Trump: Brain freezes and awkward laughs.
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