Esident’s vilification of Putin doesn’t help matters

Several weeks into the war in Ukraine, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked President Joe Biden if he agreed with those who call Russian President Vladimir Putin “a killer.” “I do,” said Biden. Since calling Putin a killer, Biden has progressed to calling him “a war criminal,” “a murderous dictator,” “a pure thug” and “a butcher.”

It is difficult to recall an American president using such a string of epithets about the leader of a nation with which we were not at war.

What is Biden’s rationale? What is his purpose here?

Richard Nixon toasted the century’s greatest mass murderer Mao Zedong in the Great Hall of the People during his historic trip to China in 1972. His purpose: establish relations with America’s most hostile adversary — to help Nixon advance a “generation of peace.”

But when it comes to depicting Putin, who launched this invasion of Ukraine, Biden repeatedly reaches for the nastiest of insults.

But why?

“Putin deserves it,” say the champions of a Cold War II. We need more truth and candor in diplomacy. When Biden referenced Putin in the closing remarks

his address in Warsaw, Poland — “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power” — they were elated.

Biden was calling for regime change in Russia, calling for the people of Russia administer to the “killer” and “butcher” the fate he deserves and remove him from power by any means necessary.

Within minutes of hearing their president go offscript with his call for regime change in Russia, White House aides and Cabinet officers were scrambling to assure reporters that president of the United States did not mean what the president of the United States had just said.

Biden was expressing his “moral outrage” at carnage Putin has unleashed on Ukraine, they said — not making a change in U.S. policy.

A second problem is that Putin is many things other than the terms

Biden used to describe him.

He commands the largest nuclear arsenal on earth and 10 times as many battlefield nuclear weapons as the U.S. military. He is the man we must look to if we hope to end the war in Ukraine. For Putin alone can order the Russian army to stand down or withdraw, presumably a goal of U.S. foreign policy.

If the president of the United States is the most powerful man in the world, Putin is up there alongside him.

Without Putin’s cooperation, the bloodletting goes on in Ukraine.

How does it advance the goal of getting his agreement to end the war in Ukraine for the U.S. president to repeatedly call him vile names?

Already, we have paid a price.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley are finding their secure phones to opposite numbers in the Russian government have gone silent.

In Moscow, there is talk of severing diplomatic relations with the United States because of Biden’s name-calling.

None of the aspiring peacemakers seeking to broker a ceasefire or truce in the Ukraine war are acting like this or using language like that.

We see the cost of what Biden is doing; wherein lies benefit?