KAITLAN COLLINS: Why are you so confident he’ll change his behavior, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I didn’t — I’m not confident he’s changed his behavior. Where the hell — what do you do all the time? When did I say I was confident? I said — I said — what I said was — let’s get it straight: I said what will change their behavior is if the rest of the world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world. I’m not confident of anything; I’m just stating the facts.
KAITLAN COLLINS: But given his past behavior has not changed, and in that press conference, after sitting down with you for several hours, he denied any involvement in cyberattacks, he downplayed human rights abuses, he even refused to say Alexei Navalny’s name — so, how does that account to a “constructive” meeting, as President Putin framed it?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business. Thank you.
President Biden later apologized, saying to Kaitlan Collins — for being a, quote, “wise guy.”
