Former White House aide says Vladimir Putin humiliated Joe Biden in 2011, days after president talks tough
President Joe Biden has given the message that he will be dealing with Russia more sternly than his predecessor Donald Trump and recently went to the extent of calling his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a “killer” and that he would “pay a price” over the allegations that the Kremlin interfered in the 2020 presidential election. In an exclusive interview with ABC News earlier this week, he also recalled his tense phone call with Putin in January in which he reportedly cautioned Putin to stay prepared if the charges that Russia meddled with America’s elections were established. Russia subsequently recalled its ambassador to the US after Biden’s interview and Putin challenged Biden to debate him on air.
But as Biden’s supporters revelled the fact that the leader of the free world spoke with his old foe with authority, something the Trump years did not see much, it has been revealed by a former White House staff that the Democratic leader also tasted Putin’s bitter medicine during his visit to Russia exactly a decade ago, in March 2011. Mike McCormick, a former stenographer at the White House, has come up with a new book called Joe Biden Unauthorized: And the 2020 Crackup of the Democratic Party in which he has revealed the humiliation the then vice president had undergone in Russia.
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In an exclusive piece for The National Impulse, the Obama-era White House member said: “Vladimir Putin and his staff sought the almost ritualistic humiliation of then-Vice President Joe Biden, who commanded very little respect on the world stage during his tenure as veep. If it can be believed, he commands even less, now. Ever since that moment I witnessed, Joe Biden and his staffers – with the help of Washington’s press corps – have been spinning the story 180 degrees away from how it actually happened.”
McCormick slammed Biden and his administration to say: “After Biden lied about his prowess with Putin in a sickly sweet interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Putin pulled his ambassador out of Washington. It’s a pretty big move from Putin out of the blocks. Usually, if you fear a nation and its leader, you don’t start by pulling your ambassador. This is Putin’s telling the Biden regime: “We don’t need you, and we don’t fear you”.”
He then said that the same press that had “chastised Trump” for trying to avoid a pointless conflict with the Russians, is now “fawning over Joe Biden’s kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party”. In September last year, when the race for the presidential election was heating up, McCormick said in an interview that Biden was unfit to become the US president and had mentioned his 2011 experience in Russia as well. “Joe makes a fool of himself in front of dictatorial leaders. Vladimir Putin made Biden look foolish in Moscow when he invited him to tell about his history with Russia. When Biden did not stop talking, Putin shut the lights and the microphone while Biden was still speaking. It left Biden speechless,” he told WION. He also said that not just Putin but even Chinese President Xi Jinping, who was then his country’s vice president, mocked Biden in 2011.
How exactly did Putin humiliate Biden?
In the chapter ‘Bitch Slapped in Moscow’ in his new book, McCormick wrote in detail what had happened during Biden’s only visit to Russia while being a part of the administration in Washington. Putin was then the prime minister of Russia with Dmitry Mevedev being the president.
According to McCormick: “As Joe Biden’s White House stenographer, I stood directly behind Putin at a distance of five feet. Biden, seated across from Putin at an elegant conference table, was about 12 feet from me. About 10 minutes into the meeting, Vice President Biden attempted to start lecturing about his decades-old part in U.S.-Russian negotiations with the dreaded phrase, ‘I’ve been around a long time. The first time I was here…’”
“And… cut. Across the table, I could see Vice President of the United States Joe Biden, in the now dimly lit room, looking as duped as an exhausted fish in the bottom of a boat. No protest, no complaint. No, hey, I wasn’t finished. Nothing. He was humiliated. To me, the revelation was the premeditated precision of the snub. Putin or his team had likely plotted this all out. They knew exactly what bait to use, exactly how Joe Biden would take it, and then when he did, they reeled him helplessly in,” the former White House aide, who worked there between 2002 and 2017, said.
“The Russian President and his delegation sat calmly and coldly as their American counterparts realized their blustery leader’s big moment had been stolen right out from under him. The most powerful man in Russia had neither fear nor respect for Joe Biden. He had just played with him for sport,” McCormick said. He also gave a link to the transcript he had prepared for the Obama White House Press Office and it clearly showed an abrupt ending with Biden unable to complete his sentence.
McCormick also told Fox News in an interview that the event got little coverage in the US and a journalist who tried to do it did not get a broadcast opportunity again.
Biden made another gaffe during his 2011 Russia visit
Biden committed another gaffe during his talk with Putin during that visit. The two leaders during that meeting planned to discuss bilateral relations, with a special focus on cooperation on missile defense, induction of Russia into the World Trade Organization and expansion of cooperation on regional problems like in Iran and Afghanistan. But according to a report in CNN, the then Russian premier shocked Biden by floating a proposal at the meeting’s opening that “his country and the United States abolish visas between them”. The then US veep first said it was a good idea but then realizing it, he backtracked, saying:“Mr. Prime Minister, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a real difference between being president and vice president,” a report in The New York Times said.
Fox host Sean Hannity feels Putin has mocked the US president openly by challenging him to an open-air conversation to discuss the latter’s warning to him over paying a price. He said on Thursday, March 18, that Putin “is openly mocking the president of the United States for his own amusement and frankly, I find it, as an American citizen, humiliating."
"I’ve just thought of this now. I want to invite President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it actually live. But with no delays, directly in an open, direct discussion,” Putin told a reporter in Moscow the same day.