White House tiptoes around Biden’s claim Putin is a ‘rational actor’

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to give additional background to President Joe Biden’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “rational actor” who “miscalculated” how the Ukraine war would go.

Jean-Pierre faced several questions Wednesday about Biden’s comments, which were made during a Tuesday evening interview on CNN, to which she pointed to Biden’s more than 40 years of experience in foreign policy.

BIDEN: PUTIN A ‘RATIONAL ACTOR’ WHO ‘TOTALY MISCALCULATED’ IN UKRAINE

“This is a place, an arena if you will, that he knows very well,” she stated. “The president was very clear when he said that Putin was a rational actor who badly miscalculated, and we’ve talked about why he badly miscalculated.”

Jean-Pierre cited a “stronger NATO” uniting behind Ukraine as a core pillar of Putin’s miscalculation but did not specify why Biden called him a “rational actor.”

“I’m just going to let his words stand,” she said in one follow-up response. “He said, the president’s words, he’s a rational actor who badly miscalculated. He miscalculated what his aggression, what his war that he created against Ukraine would lead to, and we’ve seen that Putin has become a pariah.”

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You can listen to Wednesday’s gaggle in full below.

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