CNN :
Two days after President Joe Biden’s return from Europe, one improvised comment about Russian President Vladimir Putin hovers over the White House: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
The White House and Biden himself have swiftly tried to downplay the President’s comment, which was made at the end of a capstone address in Warsaw. The administration and allies say Biden wasn’t calling for regime change to remove Putin from power. Rather, they argue that Biden was saying Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over neighboring nations.
The comment, which came at the very end of a two-country visit to Europe meant to reinforce alliances, wasn’t planned and surprised aides who were watching Biden’s speech on television or at the event site. And the words hadn’t been something Biden raised as potentially including in his speech — previously, US officials were adamant that changing the government in Moscow wasn’t one of their objectives. In closed-door meetings earlier in the week, Biden told fellow leaders at NATO that he did not want to escalate the West’s confrontation with Russia.
Yet his ad-libbed line did more to pit him directly against Putin than anything so far in the conflict.
Now, Biden and White House officials are expected to face questions about the comments.
The White House took the rare step of disclosing that the President expects to address questions when he delivers remarks on his budget proposal Monday afternoon. And later Monday, economic officials will brief the press in Washington. ‘He’s a butcher’
People who spoke to Biden before and after the speech described him as personally affected after visiting with refugees at the national stadium in Warsaw, where women asked him to pray for the men — husbands, sons and brothers — who had stayed behind to fight. Asked by reporters traveling with the President what seeing the refugees made him think as he deals with Putin every day, Biden responded, “He’s a butcher.”
Directly ahead of the speech, the President had also been briefed by officials about a series of missile strikes on a fuel depot in Lviv, Ukraine, a western city not far from the Polish border. The timing seemed hardly coincidental as Biden was visiting Warsaw.
Despite the Biden administration’s quick walk-back of the comments about Putin’s power, they obscured the rest of Biden’s speech, which focused on reassuring NATO allies the US would come to their defense if Putin pushes further into Europe. White House aides had been working on writing the speech for days, including in the hours leading up to the address.
Vinay Reddy, Biden’s top speechwriter, and Mike Donilon, his senior adviser who helps craft the President’s major speeches, both traveled to Europe with Biden and were involved in writing the speech.
