President Joe Biden is known for his loose, off-the-cuff comments. Many have been inconsequential gaffes — an awkward turn of phrase or a moment of embarrassing honesty about his personal life.
Then there are times when Biden has said the quiet part out loud, including on key foreign policy matters. His blunt remarks have prompted pushback from world leaders and attempts to correct the record from State Department and White House officials.
Since becoming president, Biden has repeatedly revealed his inner thinking on sensitive matters of diplomacy and national security, even on issues where his advisers and appointees attempt to maintain strict messaging discipline. He has seldom actually contradicted official policy, but his comments give observers insights into the worries latent in his administration’s relationships with Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Northern Ireland.
The White House and State Department did not return POLITICO’s requests for comment.
Here are a few of the times Biden has been bolder, and less diplomatic, than his aides may have liked:
Biden calls Chinese leader Xi a dictator
The U.S. has long been critical of China’s human rights record, condemning Beijing’s treatment of ethnic minority populations in Tibet and Xinjiang. It has also pushed for democracy in Hong Kong and condemned the violent suppression of peaceful protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 as well as China’s imprisonment of dissidents. The State Department identifies China as an authoritarian country.
But the U.S. has seldom, if ever, directly condemned individual Chinese leaders as autocrats, even as Chinese paramount leader Xi Jingping has consolidated power over the past few years.
That changed in June, when Biden unexpectedly called Xi a “dictator” at a fundraiser in California.
Biden told the crowd that “the reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there.”
“That was the great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” Biden continued.
Beijing immediately pushed back, registering a formal protest and summoning the U.S. ambassador to Beijing for an official reprimand over the comment — further straining already-fractured relations between the nations.
Biden then attempted to downplay his comment, saying at a news conference with the Indian prime minister later that week that he expected to meet with Xi sometime in the near future and that he did not think the incident “had any real consequence.”
Again this week, after Biden and Xi met in San Francisco on Wednesday, Biden reiterated his earlier criticism of the Chinese leader: “Look, he is. He’s a dictator in the sense that he’s a guy who runs a country that is a communist country.” The comments prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to visibly wince.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly condemned Biden’s remarks again. A spokesperson told reporters on Thursday that “this kind of speech is extremely wrong and is irresponsible political manipulation."
Biden pledges to defend Taiwan
Officially, the Biden administration has continued the U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan, meaning the U.S. has not definitively stated whether it would intervene to defend the self-governing island in the event of an invasion by China.
But at various moments during his presidency, Biden has pledged to defend Taiwan if China were to invade and try to integrate it by force, prompting observers to say that strategic ambiguity is functionally dead.
At a CNN Town Hall in 2021, Biden said the U.S. has a “commitment” to Taiwan. In May and September 2022, Biden vowed that the U.S. would defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion —
5 times Biden’s off-the-cuff remarks have landed him in diplomatic hot water
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18.11.2023
President Joe Biden is known for his loose, off-the-cuff comments. Many have been inconsequential gaffes — an awkward turn of phrase or a moment of embarrassing honesty about his personal life.
Then there are times when Biden has said the quiet part out loud, including on key foreign policy matters. His blunt remarks have prompted pushback from world leaders and attempts to correct the record from State Department and White House officials.
Since becoming president, Biden has repeatedly revealed his inner thinking on sensitive matters of diplomacy and national security, even on issues where his advisers and appointees attempt to maintain strict messaging discipline. He has seldom actually contradicted official policy, but his comments give observers insights into the worries latent in his administration’s relationships with Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Northern Ireland.
The White House and State Department did not return POLITICO’s requests for comment.
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