During his first interview with an American news organization in three years, Russian President Vladimir Putin told NBC News on Monday he views President Joe Biden as a political “career man” prone to hollow “macho” posturing, such as an interview last year in which Biden referred to Putin as a “killer.”
Biden backed down from those remarks on Monday as he prepared for his scheduled meeting with Putin on Wednesday.
When NBC interviewer Keir Simmons asked Putin to contrast dealing with Biden versus his predecessor, Donald Trump, Putin made it clear he sees Biden as much easier to handle because he is a predictable lifetime professional politician, not a renegade outsider from beyond the “U.S. establishment” like Trump:
Well even now, I believe that former US President Mr. Trump is an extraordinary individual, a talented individual, otherwise he would not have become US President. He is a colorful individual. You may like him or not. And, but he didn’t come from the U.S. establishment.
He had not been part of big time politics before, and some like it some don’t like it but that is a fact. President Biden, of course, is radically different from Trump because President Biden is a career man. He has spent virtually his entire adulthood in politics.
[…]
That’s a different kind of person, and it is my great hope that yes, there are some advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any knee-jerk reactions on behalf of the sitting US president that we will be able to comply with certain rules of engagement, certain rules of communications and will be able to find points of contact and common points.
Simmons tried to create a little drama by reminding the Russian leader that Biden claims to have called him soulless to his face ten years ago. Putin said he did not recall Biden saying any such thing to him.
“I do not remember any inappropriate elements of behavior on the part of my counterparts. I don’t think that anything like that has happened. Perhaps he did say something, but I do not remember,” Putin said.
Putin denied every allegation of misbehavior directed at his government, from directing or indulging cyberattacks against the United States to his brutal repression of domestic political opponents like imprisoned and outlawed dissident Alexei Navalny, whose name Putin refuses to speak.
Putin left Simmons sputtering in stunned outrage when he claimed he has no fear of political opponents and takes no actions to repress them, at one point grumbling that if Simmons truly believed in free speech, he would pipe down and let Putin finish answering his questions.
Continue reading: Breitbart.com
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