Biden contradicted his own staff Monday by insisting he did not regret or retract his call from over the weekend for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be removed from power in response to his invasion of Ukraine.
“I’m not walking anything back,” the president told reporters at the White House. “The fact of the matter is I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt.”
Biden then added, “But I wasn’t then, nor am I now, expressing a policy change. I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel and I make no apologies for it.”
On Saturday, Biden ended a speech in Poland by ad-libbing of Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
Shortly after that unscripted remark, an unnamed White House aide said in a rushed statement to reporters: “The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”
White House chief of staff Ron Klain retweeted a message from CNN White House correspondent John Harwood Sunday that said Biden’s remark showed a “significant lapse in discipline,” while the president told reporters upon leaving church that “no” he wasn’t calling for regime change in Russia.
Biden’s trip to Europe was marred by a series of imprecise remarks.
On Friday, the White House rushed to walk back Biden’s statement to US troops in Poland implying that they were going into Ukraine.
“You’re going to see when you’re there, and some of you have been there, you’re gonna see — you’re gonna see women, young people standing in the middle in front of a damned tank just saying, ‘I’m not leaving, I’m holding my ground,’ ” Biden said.
A White House official quickly clarified that Biden wasn’t changing his stance on deploying the military into Ukraine, saying: “The president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.”
Biden attempted to further clarify that statement Monday by telling reporters that he was referring to American troops training Ukrainian soldiers in Poland.
During a 19-minute press conference in Belgium Thursday, Biden said that the US response to Russian troops using chemical weapons “would depend on the nature of the use” — then turned heads by saying the US would respond “in kind.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Friday aboard Air Force One that Biden’s “in kind” remark was not meant as a threat of the US using chemical weapons against Russia.
“The United States has no intention of using chemical weapons, period, under any circumstance,” Sullivan said.