So President Biden escaped his meeting with Tsar Vladimir the First with a whole skin on Wednesday, and managed to deal with a few questions afterward without staring into the middle distance for more than a few seconds at a time. Although he did have a bit of a problem with a query that should have been on everyone’s mind from the beginning. Not of the press confab, either. From the very beginning of planning for this wretched encounter.
CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins committed an unexpected act of journalism when she essentially asked the President why, given Putin’s denial of all accusations of bad behavior and his lack even of a hint of a promise to be a better citizen in future, should the meeting be considered a “success?” It was a decent question and evidently unscripted, because it caught Joe unprepared. Ms. Collins was evidently not on the “List of who to call on” Biden mentioned he was given at the beginning of the press conference. So he reverted to his time-tested automatic response: a nasty retort demeaning the ability of his female interlocutor. This time right out in public.
Biden’s loss of self-control included, this meeting – which was supposed to be the crowning achievement of the president’s week-long visit to Europe – was a dangerous flop. As expected, there were no “deliverables” – undertakings which can actually be measured to see to what degree they are achieved. There was nothing measurable, no specifics, only Joe Biden telling the credulous and sycophantic American press that he gave Vlad the Terrible what for.
The meeting was scheduled to take a while – four or five hours. Instead it was over in less than three because, as the president noted, the principals simply ran out of things to talk about. “We looked at each other like, OK, what next?” he quipped.
Really?
Cyber attacks and hacks, militarization of the Artic, military aid to Iran, Russian naval exercises off Hawai’i on the day of the conference, nuclear regulation and stability, the conflict in Syria, Russian pressure on Ukraine and other former elements of the USSR that Tsar Vlad wants to reassemble, election meddling, disinformation – and our president can’t find enough conversation with the man behind all these threats to last more than a couple hours? Did he check both his jacket pockets?
Perhaps being at a loss for topics to discuss was not the real reason the conference ground to a halt. No one will explore this, but it might be a good thing for Americans to know. Believe me, Vlad knows already, and he will act based on that knowledge. Prepare to be uncomfortably surprised by international goings-on for the next few years.
In the end this was a meeting with no results; no agreements; no measurable product at all, save for the carbon spewed to drag everyone to this ridiculous farce mounted by a mob of charlatans who pretend to be “green” and the tab taxpayers will foot for the participants’ room and board during this boondoggle… It’s almost as though they wanted a farce so grandiose that everyone would focus on it rather than the Vice President’s failures in the Central American “Triangle Countries.”
But that’s a whole different story.
