President Biden held a rare formal news conference Wednesday, one day before the first anniversary of his inauguration.
The event came with the president’s …
President Biden held a rare formal news conference Wednesday, one day before the first anniversary of his inauguration. The event came with the president’s poll ratings at a low ebb, and as he is enduring one of his most difficult stretches to date. His legislative agenda has stalled and he faces challenges ranging from inflation to Russian aggression. But the president, speaking amid the grandeur of the East Room of the White House, had a chance to reset the agenda with the midterm elections just 10 months away. Here are the five biggest takeaways. A big misstep on Russia Biden’s loquaciousness has a history of getting him in trouble. So it proved again on Wednesday. A predictable question on a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine produced an odd and damaging response. Biden suggested that a “minor incursion” by the Kremlin’s forces might not receive much aggressive pushback from the United States. The comment lit up social media, and a second reporter asked Biden about it later in the news conference. Offered a second bite at the cherry, Biden missed yet again, this time implying that a limited Russian action would make it difficult for him to drive a unified response from NATO. White House aides immediately scrambled to try to clear up the confusion. They had little success. They core of the problem is that Biden’s remarks sounded weak and timid — liabilities that Putin will try to maximally exploit. The Russian leader has form. He annexed Crimea in 2014 and, for all its noble-sounding words of protest, the international community has not been able to reverse the move. The entire thrust of Washington’s approach in its negotiations with the Kremlin has been to show seriousness this time around. But Biden put a hole in his own strategy Wednesday, for no obvious reason. In terms of domestic politics, the remark will also feed into the conservative tendency to portray Democrats as puny on the world stage. The news conference was long — very long Biden spent almost two hours in the East Room, and even joked about the longevity of the event in its closing stages.
