DNC Media's Pyongyang-style obsession with painting Biden as defeating Putin is some of the worst garbage reporting yet. Putin mopped the floor with Biden, and everyone on Earth outside of U.S. newsrooms knows it. Putin was ENJOYING HIMSELF. It was a romp.
Our media is trying to get its bunks rocking by fantasizing about Biden giving Putin a firm handshake. The enduring moments of this meeting, the things that will be noted and remembered around the world, are Biden in retreat, submissive and confused, backing down from his hype.
Biden helplessly pleading with Putin not to cyberattack vital infrastructure targets. Biden nodding dumbly when asked if he trusts Putin, after all that bluster about putting the "killer" in his place. Putin getting pipeline and arms concessions while the U.S. gets nothing.
Putin romping gleefully through a marathon press conference while weak and confused Joe Biden snapped like a twig after the slightest of questions from the lapdog U.S. media. You can bet THAT'S going to get heavy play in Russian and Chinese media.
These summits are always going to be mostly theatrics. It's probably a mistake to elevate Putin by agreeing to meet as "equals." In a sense, he wins just by showing up. U.S. leaders keep fantasizing about winning him over or putting him on the back foot with their personal charm.
The big problem is that Putin goes into these things as a determined underdog. As with Xi Jinping, he's the authoritarian ruler of a hyper-nationalist, aggressive, ambitious regime facing the president of a divided U.S. weakened by debt, incompetent government, and self-loathing.
The Chinese are much better at it, but Putin twigged to their basic strategy of studying U.S. media and hitting the Americans with their own controversies and neurotic obsessions, playing up our divisions, and above all using our own rhetoric to challenge our moral authority.
To get much advantage from a summit like this, the U.S. needs the theatrics to work to its advantage - and to put it mildly, that didn't happen with Joe Biden, despite the comical efforts of his loyal media. Biden was a disaster, and the free world will suffer for it. /end
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