By Rajan Menon
Joe Biden, by his own admission, is a man who sometimes goes off script. Whereas some presidents seek to bottle up their emotions and remain reserved for the cameras, Biden wears his emotions on his sleeves. The president proved that yet again during his visit to Poland over the weekend, where he let loose on Russian president Vladimir Putin at the conclusion of a speech: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
Many in the West would privately agree with Biden’s assessment. If Putin was a cold, brutal and calculating autocrat before he launched a war of choice against Ukraine last month, he is now commonly depicted as a megalomaniac who has no compunction about invading a smaller neighbor, destroying cities with artillery and air strikes and killing a whole bunch of civilians in the process. For the tens of millions of Ukrainians who have been forced to flee their homes and the thousands of others who have experienced the death of family or close friends in the Russian bombardment, Biden’s words were a refreshing display of candor.
This piece was originally published in Spectator on March 28, 2022. Read more HERE.