A video from 2021, one that went extremely viral at the time and showed President Biden’s willingness to confront questions with hostility, a trait shown again in 2024 when he snapped at reporters who asked about his mental health after the Hur report, shows Biden yelling at a reporter who asked about his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As background, that meeting occurred before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which kicked off in the winter of 2022. The two met in Geneva at a summit to discuss peace, with the main items on the agenda being suspected Russian cyberattacks, decreasing tensions between the Russian Federation and the United States, and human rights.It was after President Biden gave a press conference on his meeting with President Putin that CNN’s chief White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins, asked him about Putin’s intentions. Collins pressed the president on why, after the Geneva meeting, he was “confident” that President Putin would “change his behavior.”
President Biden wasn’t happy with the question. Stopping to answer, he turned around, threw his arms in the air, and snapped at Collins, yelling that he wasn’t confident of anything and cursing in his response to her. The angry president snapped, “I’m not confident he’s going to change his behavior. What the hell? What do you do all the time? When did I say I was confident?”
Continuing, Biden insisted that he’s not confident of anything but that he thinks world unity in response to Russia could change its behavior. He snapped, “Look, let’s get it straight. What I said was what will change their behavior is if the rest of the world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world.” He added, “I’m not confident of anything.”
Then, Collins attempted to follow up on her question by asking how the meeting with President Putin could be constructive if the Russian state continues to deny allegations of being behind cyberattacks and involved in human rights abuses. Biden fired back, hammering her for not understanding the give and take of geopolitics, “If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business.”
At the time, the video took off on social media. According to Newsweek, shortly after it was posted, the explosive video had over 434,000 views on the GOP War Room’s YouTube channel, along with a “large number of views on the YouTube channels of media outlets such as The Hill (50,000) Reuters (26,000) the BBC (262,000) Sky News (179,000) and Fox Business (63,000).”
Watch the angry exchange here:
Predictably, the angry exchange with Collins led to some degree of backlash and, before he departed Geneva on Air Force One, Biden said, Newsweek reports, that he owed CNN’s Collins “an apology.” He added, “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy with the last answer I gave.” Collins, for her part, said that the president’s apology was “completely unnecessary.” She said, “He did not have to apologize, though I appreciate he did.”
Other journalists were still angry, however, with New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi tweeting, “If you’re the most powerful person in the world and you can’t field questions from the media without losing your temper, maybe you’re in the wrong business.”
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