Joe Biden suffers brain-snap after question from CNN reporter

Perhaps the best thing you could say about Joe Biden’s meeting with Vladimir Putin is that he didn’t return Alaska to the Russians. But that’s about it.

Perhaps the best thing you could say about Joe Biden’s meeting with Vladimir Putin is that he didn’t return Alaska to the Russians. But that’s about it.

The Doddering Joe Show, which kicked off at last week’s G7 when his minders could no longer keep the president under wraps, kept the hits coming when it moved on from Cornwall to Geneva for a face-to-face with Russia’s ex-KGB strongman leader.

US President Joe Biden talks to Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to the US-Russia summit at the Villa La Grange, in Geneva on June 16, 2021. Picture: AFP

Plenty of people noticed when Biden showed up with what appeared to be note cards while a visibly bored Putin slumped in his chair, with his body language saying: “can we make this snappy? I’ve got a whole list of dissident journalists to arrest and I was hoping to knock off early Friday”.

But it was after the event that things really got interesting.

After the Biden-Putin meeting wrapped up after just three hours — much shorter than expected, this was not the stuff of Reagan and Gorbachev’s epic talks in that same city in 1985 — the president went on to take questions from the press, including CNN’s Kaitlan Collins who asked him: “Why are you so confident (Putin) will change his behaviour Mr President?”

That set the president off on an epic jag of what is known, when Republicans do it, as “mansplaining”.

US president Joe Biden arrives to board Air Force One after the US - Russia summit with president Vladimir Putin. Picture: AFP

“I’m not confident he’ll change his behaviour — what the hell, what do you do all the time? When did I say I was confident?” the president snapped.

When Collins pressed her case, asking how it was a constructive meeting, Biden snapped back: “If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business.”

Hoo-kay, then.

Who knows? Maybe there’s a method in his madness, and Biden thought this sort of tough guy act might be the sort of thing that would give him some common ground.

But that’s unlikely, as Biden has a real temper underneath his doddering uncle persona (recall his calling a voter “fat” during the campaign, among other incidents.)

He eventually went back to the reporter and apologised for being a “wise guy” with her but this could be the moment when a generally sympathetic – if not sycophantic – American press corps starts to turn on the new administration.

Originally published as Joe Biden suffers brain-snap after question from CNN reporter