Over the past few days, as it has become increasingly clear that Putin planned some sort of push into Ukraine, President Joe Biden was widely mocked both on and offline for his weakness, something many people saw as the reason why Putin felt emboldened to invade.
Peter Doocy, for example, during a White House press conference, brought up this video Biden made in 2019:
Asking about it, Doocy said “The President said before he got here that “Putin knows, if I am President of the United States, his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over.” It’s two and a half years later. He is intimidating the United States and those in Eastern Europe. What happened?”
Psaki, predictably, had no good response.
But Doocy wasn’t the only one mocking Biden’s weakness and blaming it for Putin’s incursion into the Ukraine. President Trump, speaking on the issue, said:
“If properly handled, there was absolutely no reason that the situation currently happening in Ukraine should have happened at all. I know Vladimir Putin very well, and he would have never done during the Trump Administration what he is doing now, no way!”
He made that same point in an interview, saying:
By the way, this never would have happened with us. Had I been in office, not even thinkable. This would never have happened. But here’s a guy that says, you know, “I’m gonna declare a big portion of Ukraine independent,” he used the word “independent,” “and we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.” You gotta say that’s pretty savvy. And you know what the response was from Biden? There was no response. They didn’t have one for that. No, it’s very sad. Very sad.