On Friday, while on a trip to Europe, President Biden appeared to be perplexed about senior members of his cabinet, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
During his visit to Poland to speak with American service members, accompanied by several other US officials, he made several fundamental errors in his statements about what happened in the run-up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and what has happened since then.
“The reason why, when the General- when the Secretary of State asked me if I’d send another 12,000 troops along to the United States I said yeah- from the United States- we have 100,000 American forces here in Europe. We haven’t had that in a long, long time,” Biden stated.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reacts to Biden’s use of improper nomenclature, as shown in the video to Biden’s left as he’s speaking. In his discussion of the call for extra troops, Biden was attempting to invoke this figure. And, as Biden pointed out, those American forces were requested “from” the United States, not “to” it.
Furthermore, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense are not the same person, work in different places, and have different responsibilities.
Biden is obviously exhausted; going across the Atlantic near a warzone and meeting with numerous foreign leaders would exhaust anyone, let alone a 79-year-old. But Biden isn’t just any person; he’s the President of the United States, who is currently parading around the world, attempting to demonstrate American unity with our allies in the face of Putin’s violent, now month-long invasion of Ukraine.
