The White House on Thursday used a State Department report to back up Vice President Joe Biden’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a dictator, even as the State Department refused to comment on Biden’s speech at the Democratic Convention.
“We cannot elect a man who belittles our closest allies while embracing dictators like Vladimir Putin,” Biden said about GOP nominee Donald Trump during his address Wednesday night.
On Thursday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest clarified that the U.S. government doesn’t have a specific “dictator” designation. However, a State Department report outlined the authoritarian nature of Putin’s regime, and Earnest said he doesn’t see daylight between it and Biden’s remarks.
“The Russian Federation has a highly centralized authoritarian political system dominated by President Vladimir Putin,” Earnest read from the report. It also noted that Russia’s institutions “lacked independence from the executive branch.”
“I think you’d be hard-pressed to draw a distinction between the word that Vice President Biden used and the language that was included in the State Department report,” Earnest said.
