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An NBC News reporter has grilled White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield on whether or not President Biden is “delivering on” one of his most prominent campaign promises.
During the 2020 presidential election, Biden repeatedly condemned then-President Trump for his bombastic rhetoric that could have negative consequences, arguing that a president’s words are “important” and suggesting he would be more disciplined as commander-in-chief.
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After a series of statements by Biden that the White House needed to go back, NBC News correspondent Mike Memoli Bedingfield pressed on Tuesday’s press conference for Biden’s explosive comment from Saturday’s speech in Poland, in which he said that the Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power”. the President himself spoke during Monday’s press conference.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during an event at the Royal Castle amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Warsaw, Poland March 26, 2022. Slawomir Kaminski /Agencja Wyborcza.pl via REUTERS
“Obviously he was trying to imply yesterday that there was a difference between his personal views on what he considered moral outrage and an official United States policy position, but you know exactly what candidate Joe Biden was saying practically every day campaign, which means a president’s words matter, they can, as he often put it, take a country to war,” Memoli said. “He’s not living up to the standard he set for himself during the campaign ?”
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“Absolutely not,” Bedingfield replied. “I think the President’s words here were incredibly powerful. He spoke personally about the moral outrage he felt, which is shared by people around the world. That doesn’t mean he’s articulating a change in policy. That doesn’t mean he’s going to set out a change in U.S. policy.”
“He met with refugees … and saw firsthand some of the pain Vladimir Putin has inflicted on people fleeing their homes and seeing their country torn apart by war. So that was an incredibly personal, powerful statement of moral outrage. It was not an articulation of a new US policy. And I think both can be true in our case,” Bedingfield added.
President Joe Biden speaks alongside Director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young as he announces his fiscal year 2023 budget proposal on March 28 )
Menoli then followed up: “Is he frustrated? Or does he regret that these didn’t overshadow a larger message at the very end of the speech that obviously required a lot of thought in the days before?”
“Absolutely not,” Bedingfield replied. “He spoke from the heart. He, as he always does, as you know very well because you’ve covered him for a long time, as have many of you — and as the American people know, he speaks from the heart. He says what he feels and no, he doesn’t regret it at all.”
While the president defiantly insisted to reporters on Monday that he had not retracted any of his comments, after his speech in Poland the White House appeared to be in damage control when he made international headlines for proposing regime change in Russia.
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“The President’s point was that Putin must not be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He has not discussed Putin’s power in Russia or regime change,” the White House said shortly after Biden’s speech.
On Thursday, he suggested the US would retaliate “in kind” if Russia launched a chemical weapons attack on Ukraine. The White House issued a statement that “under no circumstances does the US intend to use chemical weapons.” Then on Friday, while speaking to American troops stationed in Poland, Biden suggested they were being sent to Ukraine when describing what they were seeing on the ground. The White House issued a statement saying, “The President has made it clear that we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and that position is not changing.”