President Biden is preparing for his first overseas trip since becoming POTUS.
The presidential trip will happen next month and take Biden to various parts of Europe where he’ll meet with key NATO allies. In particular, he’ll attend a Group of Seven meetup in the UK and participate in meetings in Brussels.
At the same time, Biden hopes that he can swing by and meet up with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
“That is my hope and expectation. We’re working on it,” Biden said.
In the past, Biden has been openly mocked by the Russian leader, who challenged him to a live debate and made fun of him when he didn’t take up the offer.
Putin has also issued strong warnings to the US, saying that America’s relations with Russia are very near the breaking point.
Can Biden pull this relationship out of the fire?
The Putin-Biden Phone Call
Putin and Biden have already spoken one-on-one, during an official phone call on April 13. During the call they talked over Russia’s troops massing near Ukraine and Biden’s concern over supposed Russian “cyber intrusions and election interference,” referring to the SolarWinds hack and the Russiagate Hoax that Democrats just can’t let go of.
During his utterly boring State of the Union snooze fest that nobody watched last week, Biden said more rhetoric and threats against Putin, bragging that “I made very clear to President Putin that while we don’t seek escalation, their actions have consequences.”
So why does Biden want to meet with Putin in person?
In particular he’s hoping to work with Moscow on extending nuclear restrictions under the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) arms deal and on climate change, because we all know Putin is there just waiting to start building some windmills and crippling Russian industry for the sake of some Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wet dream.
Biden’s other meetings in Europe will go from June 11 to 14, so after that time it would likely be possible for him to meet with Putin if the Russian leader agrees. Biden’s top national security guy Jake Sullivan said that he had spoken with Russia but that specifics hadn’t been worked out.
“We are trying to make plans for a summit this summer in a third country in Europe. No date has been fixed, no location has been fixed. But it’s actively under discussion,” he said.
If Biden and Putin meet it’s likely they will be somewhere on semi-neutral ground like Prague, Vienna or Helsinki. Obama met with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 in Prague and Trump met with Putin in Helsinki in 2018, causing the liberal media to lose their minds and accuse him of treason with no proof.
Joe Biden might be the Gerald Ford of our generation, dumb and soft. He doesn’t have the stones to stand up to Putin and Xi Jinping. He doesn’t have that club in his bag.
— Dave-The Mandalorian (@nottelinguagain) May 5, 2021
Punishing Russia Until it Folds?
Biden has put even more sanctions on Russia and Secretary of State Tony Blinken is set to visit Ukraine this week to show American support. The thing is that the Russian bear doesn’t back down from intimidation, it just gets more enraged.
Biden has spoken about Russia’s jailing of opposition politician Alexey Navalny and there’s no indication that Russia cars at all, so it’s unclear what a Biden-Putin summit would do other than show the Russian president running circles around our senile leader and smirking at Biden as he gabs on about democracy and values.
“Is this really the best moment for a Biden-Putin summit? The mere event of a meeting is a win for Putin, but what does Biden or the American people get out of it? If the promise of a future summit was supposed to modify Putin’s bad behavior, that strategy is not working,” said former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.
“Summits must seek to advance concrete American national interests. What will those be in June? I’m having a hard time thinking of even small items on a list of deliverables,” McFaul added.
He may be a liberal Obama guy, but McFaul is right on this one.
