President Joe Biden lost his patience with CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday after the latter insinuated that he was overly confident in his ability to change the behavior of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Biden asked Collins “What the hell? What do you do all the time?” and told her “if you didn’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business.”
“Why are you you so confident [Putin] is going to change his behavior, Mr. President,” Collins demanded.
Biden swung around and glared at the reporter. “I’m not confident I’m going to change his behavior,” he snapped. “What the hell? What do you do all the time? When did I say I was confident? I said, I said, what I said was, let’s get it straight, I said what will change their behavior is the [unintelligi ble] world reacts to to their behavior that diminishes their standing. I’m not confident of anything, I’m just stating the facts.”
CNN's @KaitlanCollins: "Why are you so confident [Putin] will change his behavior, Mr. President?"
Biden: "I'm not confident I'm going to change his behavior. What the hell? What do you do all the time? When did I say I was confident? I said….let's get it straight…." pic.twitter.com/h3wctccQRz
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) June 16, 2021
Collins continued to antagonized the President, arguing, “But given his past behavior has not changed, and in that press conference after sitting down with you for several hours, he denied any involvement in cyber attacks, he downplayed human rights abuses, he even refused to say Alexei Navalny’s name, so how does that account to a constructive meeting as President Putin – ”
Biden then smiled and interjected, “If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business.” He then turned and walked away as the gaggle of journalists yelled a torrent of questions at his back in vain.
Putin turned the tables on a Western journalist earlier in the day by bringing up the United States’ history of violent Black Lives Matter riots:
Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to an aggressive question from a Western journalist on Wednesday by invoking the violent and embarrassing Black Lives Matter riots in the united States that tore the country apart in 2020, noting that he was doing his “utmost in order to not allow it to happen” in Russia.
After a journalist yelled “what are you so afraid of” in regards to the arrest of Alexei Navalny, Putin stated, “America just recently had very severe events, well-known events, after the killing of an African American. And the entire movement developed known as Black Lives Matter. I’m not going to comment on that, but here’s what I do want to say: What we saw was disorder, destruction, violations of the law, etc.”
“We feel sympathy for the United States of America but we don’t want that to happen on our territory,” Putin stated. “We’re doing our utmost in order to not allow it to happen.”