Tweet from 2 Years Ago Comes Back to Haunt Biden as Putin Orders Russian 'Peacekeepers' Into Ukraine
During the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, then-candidate Joe Biden took to Twitter to boast about his tough-guy image and to remind voters of his foreign policy bona fides.
On Feb. 21, 2020, he wrote: “Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be President. He doesn’t want me to be our nominee. If you’re wondering why — it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him.”
Two years later, to the very day, now-President Biden’s pronouncement came back to bite him. After months of massing troops and weapons of war on the Ukraine border, Russian President Vladimir Putin made his move.
After recognizing the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic regions in eastern Ukraine, Putin ordered troops into the country.
Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be President. He doesn’t want me to be our nominee. If you’re wondering why — it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 21, 2020
Biden has woefully failed to check or contain the Russian threat. He has fumbled this latest round with Putin completely. He capped it off with his decision last week to send his inept Vice President Kamala Harris to work with our allies in Munich to stop Russia from invading Ukraine. Why would he do that? Because she’s done such a great job handling the crisis on our southern border?
Biden campaigned on his promise to restore America’s position of leadership in the world after the damage he claimed that former President Donald Trump had caused. But the question must be asked: Would Putin have amassed 190,000 troops at the Ukraine border if Trump were the president?
Is it a coincidence that Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 occurred during the Obama-Biden Administration? Then-Vice President Biden was serving as then-President Barack Obama’s point man in Ukraine at the time.
Toe-to-toe? At the same time Biden was working to kill the fossil fuel industry in the U.S., he waived sanctions against the German company building the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to carry the fuel from Russia to Western Europe.
Biden’s foreign policy credentials are abysmal. Considering how the current situation is playing out, his unfortunate tweet is looking worse by the day.
Biden tries hard to project the image of a formidable and shrewd leader, but it was precisely his weakness and poor judgment that handed control of Afghanistan back to the Taliban in August. His orders were directly responsible for one of the America’s greatest military humiliations. Even the legacy media outlets were critical of Biden — which is remarkable.
None of this was lost on our newly emboldened enemies who quickly realized that now was the time to act.
At the time, conservative commentators predicted that Biden’s disgraceful display of weakness on the world stage would encourage our foes to aggression. They were right.
The decline in Biden’s mental acuity, discernible to some when he launched his presidential campaign in April 2019, is now, nearly three years later, clear to all.
As he stumbles and bumbles through his appearances, our enemies are watching. In their wildest dreams, leaders like Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping likely never imagined America would elect a senile president.
But, even in his prime, Biden projected weakness.
Former White House stenographer Mike McCormick spent six years (2011-2017) at then-Vice President Joe Biden’s side as he met with world leaders, delivered speeches and interacted with members of the news media.
In September, McCormick was interviewed by The Washington Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman to discuss his recently published book, “Joe Biden Unauthorized.”
McCormick recounted a March 2011 incident that occurred in Moscow during Biden’s first visit with Putin, who was then officially Russia’s prime minister, not president. Former first lady Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state at the time, with the goal of a “reset” in U.S. relations with Russia.
As Goodman reported it, McCormick said that during a joint news conference, Biden “launched into a soliloquy about his visits to Russia during the Cold War.” Suddenly, the vice president’s microphone was cut off. Then, Goodman wrote, “the press lighting was switched off, and Putin’s aides ushered the media out of the room.”
Putin had “publicly humiliated” the vice president of the United States.
“He basically got body-slammed by Putin, really. I mean, I don’t know how else to describe it,” McCormick told Goodman. “To me, it was like, here’s our great foreign policy expert and he just got punk’d. And Vladimir Putin just had no fear or respect for him.”
Unsurprisingly, news of this very public, very deliberate indignity “never made it into media coverage of the trip,” Goodman wrote.
McCormick offered some background. Ahead of the meeting, Biden’s staffers had “made a big deal about how Putin really dominated the conversation [with] Obama” during his visit to Russia, he told Goodman. They were sure that Biden, because of his “decades of Senate foreign policy experience,” would never allow that to happen, Goodman wrote.
Describing this moment in his book, according to Goodman, McCormick wrote: “[Putin’s] message was unmistakable: I’m in charge of the room, I’m in charge of my country, and I’m in charge of the reset. As you might imagine, the vice president’s staffers were furious with the Russians. I was instructed to have the transcript reflect how the vice president had been cut off in mid sentence.”
The official White House transcript reads, according to Goodman: “VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: There’s a reason, Mr. Prime Minister. Mr. Prime Minister, I’ve been around a long time. The first time I was here — the second time I was here, I was meeting with President Brezhnev. We were trying to pass SALT II — END”
Two months after Biden took office, he sat for an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. Biden shifted into his familiar “tough guy” mode when the conversation turned to Putin.
According to ABC’s transcript of the interview, Stephanopoulos noted, “You said you know he doesn’t have a soul.”
Biden answered, “I said, ‘Looked in your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul.’ And [he] looked back and he said, ‘We understand each other.’”
Biden continued: “Look, most important thing dealing with foreign leaders in my experience, and I’ve dealt with an awful lot of ’em over my career, is just know the other guy. Don’t expect somethin’ that you’re — that — don’t expect him to — or her to — voluntarily appear in the second editions of ‘Profiles in Courage.’”
“So you know Vladimir Putin. You think he’s a killer?” asked the ABC host, referring to Putin’s treatment of opponents.
“Uh-huh. I do.”
“So what price must he pay?”
Biden responded, “The price he’s gonna pay, we’ll — you’ll see shortly. I’m not gonna — there’s — by the way, we oughta be able that ol’ — that trite expression ‘walk and chew gum at the same time,’ there’re places where it’s in our mutual interest to work together.”
Following the interview, Putin wasted no time in immediately ordering Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov to leave the U.S. Antonov did not return until three months later.
Biden has a well-founded reputation for embellishing stories to make himself look heroic, regardless of the truth of the matter, or the consequences of his words.
Notwithstanding his long career in government, Biden has never been well-respected for his strength or his intellect. And now that his failing cognitive ability has become obvious to all, he is feared by no one. Biden is all bluster and our adversaries know it.
Despite his silly claim on the campaign trail that he’s gone “toe-to-toe” with Putin, the only people he’s ever gone toe-to-toe with are his own unvaccinated citizens, and our enemies know that, too.
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