The President provoked widespread outrage at Wednesday’s news conference by stressing that a “minor incursion” into Ukraine by Russian forces would receive a less robust response.
Biden also stated Wednesday that this year’s midterm elections “easily could be illegitimate” if the Senate did not enact a comprehensive election reform measure that died hours later when Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) voted to uphold the 60-vote legislative filibuster.
“I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,” the president said. “It’s — the increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these — these reforms passed.”
On Fox News Thursday, Psaki claimed that Biden “absolutely is not predicting that the 2022 elections would be illegitimate.”
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“The point he was raising was both that in 2020, even among challenging circumstances, efforts to suppress the vote and the midst of a pandemic, there was record turnout, [among] Democrats and Republicans record turnout to go to the polls,” Psaki told “America’s Newsroom” hosts Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino.
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“And the point he was making is that the former President [Donald Trump] asked a number of states, seven or more, in fact, to overturn the outcome of the election. Now obviously, if there’s an effort to do that, we’ve got to fight against that. That’s what our commitment is to doing, but he was not making a prediction.”
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Shifting to stress in Eastern Europe, Psaki insisted that “any movement of military troops across the border into Ukraine” would be met with “severe economic consequences” for Russia.
One day earlier, Biden had suggested that the rigor of the Western response to an invasion by Moscow “depends on what it does.”
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“It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion, and then we end up having a fight about what to do and what not do, etc.,” Biden said. “But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the force they’ve massed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia.”
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Later in the news conference, Biden bragged: “I’ve already shipped over $600 million worth of sophisticated equipment, defensive equipment to the Ukrainians. The cost of going into Ukraine in terms of the physical loss of life for the Russians — and they’ll, they’ll be able to prevail over time, but it’s going to be heavy. It’s going to be real. It’s going to be consequential.”
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