Russian President Vladimir Putin is challenging President Biden to a live on-air debate that is widely seen as a trap to highlight the president’s frailty, confusion, and incompetence after he called Putin a “killer.”
Biden has declared that Putin “will pay a price” after a report detailed how Russia interfered in the 2020 presidential election.
“I’ve just thought of this now,” Putin posited for a reporter in Moscow on Thursday in what appeared to be a staged challenge. “I want to invite President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it actually live. But with no delays, directly in an open, direct discussion.” The New York Post is reporting that Biden has declined Putin’s offer of debate and claims he is “quite busy.” “I don’t have anything to report to you in terms of a future meeting. The president will, of course, be in Georgia tomorrow and quite busy,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.
Putin laid it on thick, stating that a conversation between the world’s two leading superpowers would be “interesting” and very enlightening for both the U.S. and Russian people. It would also apparently provide an international spectacle to embarrass America in general.
In an interview this week with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Biden stated that he thinks Putin is a “killer.” Putin lashed out angrily with a childish retort, saying “I know you are, but what am I.”
“You know, I remember, in childhood, when we were arguing with each other in the courtyard, we would say, ‘I know you are, but what am I,’” Putin commented. “And that’s no accident. It’s not just a childish saying. There is a very deep meaning in that.”
Putin then pivoted and claimed that Biden was accusing him of what the U.S. is guilty of. He referred to the killing of Native Americans during colonization and discrimination and injustice pertaining to black Americans.
The Russian strongman sarcastically wished Biden “good health.”
“I would say to him: ‘Be well.’ I wish him good health. I say that without any irony, without jokes,” Putin proclaimed.
Psaki was asked by reporters on Thursday if Biden regretted his remarks. She was succinct in her reply, “Nope.”
“The president gave a direct answer to a direct question,” she stated.
“I don’t want to put this off for long. I want to go to the taiga this weekend to relax a little,” Putin mocked. “So we could do it tomorrow or Monday. We are ready at any time convenient for the American side.”
Fox News host Sean Hannity said on Thursday that Putin “is openly mocking the president of the United States for his own amusement and frankly, I find it, as an American citizen, humiliating.” He bluntly laid out Putin’s reasoning concerning Biden.
Hannity wondered on-air: “Why would Vladimir Putin immediately call for a debate with Joe Biden with no time to prepare? What have I been saying? … When you compare Joe Biden to 2012 and even 2016, Joe Biden looks extremely weak, frail, often confused, and, yes, he is struggling cognitively. It is obvious. This is not brain surgery.”
“Here’s the problem we all have,” he continued. “This world has many evil actors, many hostile regimes like Putin’s Russia, like the mullahs in Iran, like President Xi and China, like North Korea and Kim Jong-Un. Guess what? They’re not pollyannish about Joe Biden. They study Joe Biden and watch our moves every day.”
“All of America’s enemies, all of the world’s hostile actors, they are seeing what we are willing to talk about openly. About Joe Biden struggling, kind of a shell of his former self from years gone by, who’s working clearly very hard to get to the weekend,” Hannity pointed out.
“Now, we’re going to ask this important question: Is any of this good for the country? Is any of this good for the free world? The answer to that is obvious as well: Not at all,” he declared.
“This is why,” Hannity concluded, “a candidate can never be allowed to hide in their basement an entire campaign and never be asked tough questions.”
Fox News reported that Andrei Turchak, who is the head of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, described Biden’s comments as an example of “the U.S. political marasmus and its leader’s dementia.”
According to Fox News: “A declassified report released Tuesday by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that while no foreign powers “manipulated any election results,” Russia sought to influence public opinion in opposition of Biden.”
Biden issued an ominous warning: “The price he is going to pay, well, you’ll see shortly.”
In turn, Russia has now recalled their ambassador to the United States and tensions have ratcheted way up between the two countries.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated on Thursday that Biden’s heated words show that Biden does not plan on improving relations with Russia.
“I’ll say only that these remarks by the U.S. president are very bad. He definitely doesn’t want to normalize relations with our country. And we’ll be acting based precisely on this premise,” Peskov warned.
Social Media took Biden to the woodshed:
