Biden's Debate Night Performance Is ‘Not Reflective’ Of My Personal Experience With Him: John Kirby

2 months ago

During Monday’s White House press briefing, Admiral John Kirby was asked about President Biden’s performance during debate night.

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Transcript

00:00Admiral, good to see you. On the point about European countries, the NATO members boosting

00:06their defense spending, that was something, though, that was a big concern of the last

00:09president as part of the reason many of them were boosting their funding.

00:12And it was a concern of the president before the last president. As you recall, President

00:16Obama said the same thing. This pledge goes back a decade or so. But the numbers speak

00:21for themselves, Ed. And rather than browbeaten and yelling and screaming and complaining

00:25and whining about it, President Biden invested in this alliance. And in just the last three

00:30and a half years now, more than double the number of allies have reached that two percent.

00:34Two questions on the follow-up from the debate. Have you, in your meetings with him, ever

00:41seen him appear similarly to the way he did on debate night?

00:47Look, I'm a spokesman. And you're in a lot of meetings with him.

00:51I am. The last thing I'm going to do is sit here and talk about every meeting I've had

00:55with the president. What I can tell you is what I saw in that debate is not reflective

01:01of the man and the leader and the commander-in-chief that I have spent many, many hours with over

01:06the last two and a half years in terms of the specificity of the way he probes, the

01:12questions he asks. Hey, just this morning, he was asking me questions about the situation

01:19on the European continent that I couldn't answer. And I told him I had to get back to

01:22him.

01:23When he met with governors last week, he suggested he'd like to curtail events that begin after

01:298 p.m. at night just because he'd rather focus on resting and doesn't want to have a long

01:37day. In your understanding of things, has the National Security Council ever withheld

01:40information from him he should have known late at night out of concern he might not

01:46be able to process it?

01:47No.

01:48Okay.

Biden's Debate Night Performance Is ‘Not Reflective’ Of My Personal Experience With Him: John Kirby

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