CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Questions Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on President Biden’s Age and Ukraine-Iraq Mix-Up
During a recent interview on Wednesday night, CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins posed probing questions to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg regarding President Joe Biden’s age. The inquiry arose following Biden’s repeated references to Ukraine as Iraq, leading to concerns about his mental acuity and potential implications for his role as Commander-in-Chief.
“Twice this week, President Biden has referred to the war in Ukraine as the war in Iraq. I don’t have to tell you, he has been facing doubts from voters about his age. He is the oldest president, of course, in the nation’s history that we’ve ever had. One of those instances happened as he was leaving the White House today,” Collins said.
“What do you say to people who are concerned about his age and slip-ups like the one he had today?”
“I wish you could be in the room with him the way I often am, seeing how he is simultaneously focused on a big picture vision and very focused on details,” Buttigieg said.
“I’ll tell you, we’ve had, for example, meetings on some of the work that we’ve been doing with rail infrastructure, where he winds up drilling in on questions so detailed. We have to go back and set up another meeting or pull in experts from Amtrak to help satisfy the president’s desire for detailed information and his focus on how that connects up into the bigger picture.”
“Look, this is an administration that has been extraordinarily effective. And, you know, one of — frankly, one of the cases that I made, back when I was running for president in an unusually young age, is that the only thing that really matters is your ability to do the job.”
Buttigieg went on to argue the administration has “delivered the strongest economic growth in terms of job creation” and that “anybody in any job ought to be judged on the job that they are doing.”
Biden told reporters that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “losing the war in Iraq” when asked about the Wagner Group’s alleged coup attempt that took place in late June.
Biden also said Tuesday night “if anybody told you — and my staff wasn’t so sure, either – that we’d be able to bring all of Europe together in the onslaught on Iraq and get NATO to be completely united, I think they would have told you it’s not likely.”
“The one thing that Putin counted on was being able to split NATO.”
Biden also called Ukraine Iraq in November but quickly corrected himself.