President Joe Biden grew defensive following his meeting with Vladimir Putin after being asked why he is “confident” the Russian president will change his behavior.
“I’m not confident he’ll change his behavior. What the hell? What do you do all the time? When did I say I was confident? What I said was… what will change their behavior is if the rest of the world reacts to them and diminishes their standing in the world,” Biden said on Wednesday.
He added, “I’m not confident of anything. I’m just stating a fact.”
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pushed back, “Given his past behavior has not changed and in that press conference… he denied any involvement in cyberattacks, he downplayed human rights abuses, he even refused to say Alexei Navalny’s name.”
She asked Biden, “How does that account to a constructive meeting?”
Biden fired back, “If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business.”
Watch the exchange below:
"What the hell? … when did I say I was confident? … if you don't understand that, you're in the wrong business" — Biden gets upset at Kaitlan Collins's shouted question as he tries to leave the news conference pic.twitter.com/mCQ1218LaW
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 16, 2021
Biden later apologized for the way he handled the question.
“I owe my last question an apology. I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy,” Biden said.
Collins responded, “That is completely unnecessary from the president. He did not have to apologize, though I do appreciate that he did there in front of the other reporters as he was about to get on Air Force One to go back to Washington.”
Kaitlan Collins says Biden apologizing for the way he handled her question is "completely unnecessary" pic.twitter.com/StQ8LZLz3z
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 16, 2021
While speaking to reporters, Putin said, “The conversation was quite constructive. And I once again understood that President Biden is an experienced statesman.”
He continued, “Our one-on-one conversation took almost two hours. It’s not every world leader that gets this amount of attention.”
Both the president and Putin indicated the meeting was generally positive, but did not say there were breakthroughs, as CNN reports.
“I did what I came to do,” Biden said.
He added, “I told President Putin my agenda is not against Russia or anyone else, it’s for the American people. I made it clear to President Putin that we’ll continue to raise issues of fundamental human rights because that’s who we are.”