President Biden needs an immediate cognitive test.
On Saturday he accused Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine as “the test of all time” for democracy before ending his sunset speech here by saying that President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said, in an unscripted remark that came at the end of his roughly 30-minute address.
A White House official later walked back the president’s statement.
“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,” the staffer told Wall Street Journal.
The White House also walked back claims by the president that the 82nd Airborne would be boots on the ground in Ukraine and that if Russia attacked Ukraine with chemical weapons, the United States would do the same.