Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused President Joe Biden of ‘weakness’ and predicted that Russian President Vladimir Putin will put the screws on him during their showdown meeting.
‘I expect tomorrow Putin will press, he will see how far he can push President Biden,’ Pompeo told Fox News host Sean Hannity hours before the summit Wednesday in Geneva.
‘He’s going to show up loaded for bear, because the actions of Biden’s administration to date suggest that will be successful,’ Pompeo said of Putin.
Pompeo urged the Biden to ‘hold Russia accountable for its malign activity, and to make clear there are red lines,’ but accused accused the U.S. president of showing an ‘enormous sign of weakness’ by refusing to hold a joint press conference with Putin.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused President Joe Biden of ‘weakness’ and predicted that Russian President Vladimir Putin will put the screws on him
Putin and Biden are scheduled to meet on Wednesday in Geneva
‘The fact that you’re not prepared to stand six or eight feet from your adversary and tell the world what it is you talked about, the things you care about and why you care about them, shows enormous weakness,’ Pompeo said.
He said that adversaries including North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping would be watching the summit carefully for signs of weakened U.S. resolve.
‘Whether it’s Chairman Kim, or the ayatollah or Xi Jinping, they’re watching this too, and when they smell weakness, when they can sniff it, the deterrence model that America’s successful defense depends upon will walk away,’ he said.
Pompeo slammed Biden for perceived weakness in his dealings with Russia so far as president, claiming the Trump administration took a tougher line.
‘They re-entered the New START treaty at the very beginning, a nuclear treaty, and we didn’t ask for anything, they wanted it desperately and we gave it up,’ he said.
‘You talk about Vladimir Putin destroying our energy industry, you should know that President Biden went first — he destroyed our energy industry by joining the Paris Climate Accords, an enormous gift to Vladimir Putin,’ Pompeo added.
It comes as U.S. senators issue public calls for Biden to confront Putin on Havana Syndrome
It comes as U.S. senators issue public calls for Biden to confront Putin on Havana Syndrome, the plague of directed-energy weapon attacks on U.S. diplomats and CIA personnel that have left dozens with debilitating symptoms.
Russia is considered by the intelligence community to be the prime suspect in the attacks, though no conclusive evidence has emerged to definitively name the perpetrator.
Experts speculate that the incidents, which were first recorded in Havana, are the result of powerful microwave beams directed at U.S. officials in an attempt to gather data from their electronic devices.
‘Certainly the Russians are one of the key suspects. We don’t know for sure, but keep in mind there have been more than a hundred American public servants who have been injured by these directed energy attacks,’ said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, during an interview with CBS News’s Face The Nation.
‘We need not only to take care of their medical needs, but also to find out who it is,’ she said. ‘I hope the president will bring up this issue with President Putin directly.’
Biden and Putin’s sit-down in the Swiss capital comes at a time when both leaders agree that U.S.-Russian relations are at an all-time low.
For four months, the two leaders have traded sharp rhetoric. Biden repeatedly called out Putin for ransomware attacks by Russian-based hackers on U.S. interests, a disregard for democracy with the jailing of Russia’s foremost opposition leader and interference in American elections.
Putin, for his part, has reacted by going on the offensive, insisting that the Russian government hasn’t been involved in any election interference or cyberattacks and claiming there is no evidence to support such allegations.
Pressed on his government’s treatment of political dissidents, Putin turned the tables and pointed to the arrests of hundreds of participants in the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot, accusing the Biden administration of punishing them over their ‘political demands.’
Now, they will meet for their first face-to-face as leaders – a conversation that is expected to last four to five hours. In advance, both sides set out to lower expectations.
Even so, Biden has called it an important step if the two nations are able to ultimately find ‘stability and predictability’ in their relationship, a seemingly modest goal from the president for dealing with the person he sees as one of America’s fiercest adversaries.
‘We should decide where it´s in our mutual interest, in the interest of the world, to cooperate, and see if we can do that,’ Biden told reporters earlier this week. ‘And the areas where we don´t agree, make it clear what the red lines are.’