Biden's staff made his Putin ad lib far worse

President Joe Biden was lambasted for declaring in his speech in Warsaw on Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” But the efforts of White House staff to walk Biden's ad-libbed comment back were far more damaging than his original declaration because they made Biden look incompetent, and America look weak.

White House staff members do not get to decide what is, and is not, U.S. policy. When the president says something — even if it is expressed in an unplanned and inept manner — it's the policy of the United States.

But not Biden's White House.

Instead of falling in line, his staff insisted the president had not said what he had plainly said. One official actually told reporters that the president was “not discussing Putin's power in Russia” but rather saying Putin “cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.”

This not only insulted Biden's listeners, who heard the plain words of his speech; it also sent a message of weakness to Russia. And it made the president seem like a puppet of his staff rather than the leader of the free world.

Instead, the White House should have issued a strong statement backing and expanding on Biden's unplanned Warsaw declaration to clarify it. The statement could have said:

In his address, President Biden was underscoring the fact that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal who unlawfully invaded his neighbor and is targeting innocent civilians with banned weapons. As a result, he has made himself an international pariah. It is up to the Russian people to decide who their president will be — and we call on Putin to release jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny and hold free and fair elections. But so long as Putin is in charge, Russia will be a rogue state shunned by the civilized world.

Not hard. A statement like this would have projected strength while also underscoring the fact that Biden never said the United States planned to remove Putin from power.

So why didn't the White House issue this kind of statement? For two reasons: First, because the Biden administration is terrified of “provoking” Putin. That is why officials didn't impose sanctions and arm Ukraine to the teeth before Putin invaded. That's why they've slow-rolled arms shipments, waiting almost a month to send an $800 million arms package that could have been shipped to Ukraine weeks earlier. That's why they won't transfer the MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland. The White House is focused on avoiding anything escalatory, when it should be focused on winning the war.

Second, the administration is trying to balance two incoherent policies: simultaneously seeking to isolate Russia while also negotiating with Russia to forge a new nuclear deal with Iran. Indeed, officials are reportedly even looking to Russia to buy Iran's excess enriched uranium as part of that deal. How can Biden at once declare Putin a pariah who should be removed from power while also asking him for diplomatic favors?

So, his staff walked back his comments.

In so doing, it fed the growing impression that Biden is not in charge of his own administration. And it further undermined public confidence in the president.

Little wonder that a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found 54% of Americans don't believe Biden has the “mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president.” And a new NBC News poll found that 71% say they have low confidence in Biden's ability to deal with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

If the president of the United States isn't even in charge of his own words, Americans are right to be concerned.