- For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.
- Nine ad-libbed words on the tail end
of President Biden's speech would have huge implications.
- I wasn't then nor am I now articulating a policy change.
- If they weren't a nonstarter.
- It wasn't planned, and obviously it created
some discomfort among Biden's advisers
because it went well beyond administration policy.
I do not expect the policy to catch up.
They are not going to adopt a policy of regime change.
- Biden has since stood by his comments.
- The fact of the matter is,
I was expressing the moral outrage I felt
toward the way Putin is dealing and the actions of this man.
- Even as US officials have walked them back.
- As you know and as you've heard us say repeatedly,
we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia,
or anywhere else, for that matter.
- The perception that the West
wants President Putin gone from power
is something that Putin has believed for at least a decade,
going back to elections in 2011, and there has been a suspicion
that he's had that the US government,
particularly Democratic leadership, has wanted him gone.
And so the idea that an American president could come out
and say that in such a formal setting
I think really raised a lot of alarms.
They don't have a specific goal of that
because it's just, you know --
the United States has a messy history with regime change.
- While Biden's comments were intense and unexpected,
it's not the first time he's had strong words for Putin.
- So you know Vladimir Putin. You think he's a killer?
- Mm-hmm, I do.
I think he is a war criminal. He's a butcher.
- Putin has shown that he has a long memory
when it comes to statements that US officials have made.
He has referenced -- He and his government
have referenced things that were said in the early '90s.
And there's no suggestion that Putin is gonna leave office
anytime soon,
so, you know, you can see this comment as something
that will potentially be echoed down the years
as part of this troubled bilateral relationship.
- And it's Putin -- it's Vladimir Putin
who's to blame, period.