As a candidate in the crowded Democratic primary four years ago, Joe Biden released an ad entitled, “The world is laughing at President Trump,” in an attempt to differentiate himself from the incumbent by underscoring his national security chops gained from serving eight years as vice president and thirty-six years in the Senate, including as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
His ad showed clips of smug European leaders chuckling privately about President Trump at a cocktail reception and at the United Nations – together with reflexive tut-tutting from liberal anchors on CNN and MSNBC – for his brusque manner and for challenging them publicly on key policy fronts. Posting the ad on Twitter, Biden said, “The world is laughing at President Trump. They see him for what he really is: dangerously incompetent and incapable of world leadership.”
Clearly, Biden’s claim is itself laughable directed at Trump, the only president elected this century on whose watch Vladimir Putin never invaded a neighboring country, and coming shortly after Trump directed the killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and less than a month before he took out Iranian Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani in an audacious drone strike shortly after the notorious assassin deplaned at Baghdad International Airport.
Fast forward four years, where Russian media outlets Tuesday morning chuckled, openly this time, about the Oval Office octogenarian’s frailty on the world stage demonstrated most recently in in Ukraine and the Middle East, and in losing track of his own Defense Secretary for close to a week exactly one month ago.
The outlets quoted former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, currently deputy chair of the country’s Security Council, laying down derisively the true sentiment of world leaders about Biden’s performance on the world stage. Noting Lloyd Austin’s disappearance from the Biden White House while in custody of nuclear launch codes, Medvedev joked Monday on social media app Telegram.
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“Unexpectedly for all, including his elderly boss, the US [secretary] of defense suddenly fell off the map. The former probably wouldn’t have noticed at all unless the public had been alarmed," he joked. “Like, where is our Commander? And so, speculations followed. The main nuclear briefcase, containing the Minuteman and Tomahawk missiles’ codes, where was it? In the surgery room with the minister, or went somewhere on its own…?”
If that wasn’t enough of a put-down, the former Russian President answered his own mocking question about the custody of the U.S. nuclear codes by underscoring Biden’s latest gaffe in a campaign speech in Las Vegas on Sunday, where Biden recalled speaking in 2021 – yes, you guessed it, once again about January 6 – with French President François Mitterrand, who just happened to have died a quarter century earlier, and for mistaking France for Germany in the same address.
Medvedev said, “It looked like there would be no answer [to the location of the nuclear launch codes]. Yet, today it has appeared. And a hell of an answer it was! That’s what the whole thing was about! Biden has received an ominous signal from the netherworld. The main owner of the codes, it turns out, is in direct contact with the deceased French President Mitterrand (who, by the way, also was the briefcase keeper). The US President has spoken of the talk himself, mistaking the Land of froggies for the Land of liver sausage along the way. The world is indeed in danger…”
Russian leaders joking openly about custody of U.S. nuclear launch codes and mocking a weak U.S. president has simply never happened before, and is remarkably dangerous coming from a country with close to 6,000 nuclear warheads, and one that just last month threatened using nuclear weapons over “any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies,” according to Reuters.
Make no mistake – none of these taunts and threats by Russian leaders and echoed by their state media would take place without Vladimir Putin's directing them personally. And the fact that Medvedev took the time to repost his insult in English the very next day on X confirms this was a direct shot across the bow of President Biden and U.S. leadership as a whole in Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere on the world stage. It comes after a well-telegraphed response to more than 160 attacks on U.S. forces by Iranian proxies in the Middle East, including the killing of three U.S. servicemen and women, that is seen in many quarters as wanting.
As Russian leaders and state media deride Biden openly and hint blithely at nuclear confrontation, one thing is clear – his weakness threatens U.S. and world security like no time since the height of the Cold War, and, echoing Biden’s own words in his campaign ad four years ago, they expose the commander-in-chief as “dangerously incompetent and incapable of world leadership.”
Mr. Ullyot is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and former chief spokesman for the National Security Council.
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