President Biden is no stranger to gaffes at the podium and while some might brush them off, one former Obama administration official is warning they are undermining the US’s “standing” on the global stage.
Brett Bruen, a former foreign service officer who served as former President Barack Obama’s director of global engagement from 2013 to 2015, wrote in a Tuesday op-ed for USA Today that he used to “cringe” whenever Biden took the podium as vice president.
“Despite all the preparation that went into an event and his remarks, as a staffer on the National Security Council, you never quite knew what he might say,” Bruen wrote.
“At times, his offhanded comments could spice up what otherwise would be a pretty boring policy address. Yet, there were other times, too many times, when it could veer into dangerous terrain.”
The ex-Obama official wrote these “reckless riffs have continued during his presidency,” citing several remarks made regarding diplomacy, including Biden’s comment on the “inevitability” that Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, would fall to the Taliban and how he asserted earlier this year that Russian President Vladimir Putin “should be removed from power.”
While Bruen said the president “bears the lion share of blame for his ill-considered improvisation,” he also blasted Biden’s national security team, which he said appeared to not have “adequately prepared him for what ought to be obvious questions.”