Biden tells reporters ‘I’m going to go to bed’ at end of rambling Vietnam press conference
President Biden called for a nap during a rambling, 26-minute international press conference in Vietnam on Sunday that capped off his whirlwꦉind trip to Asia.
“I tell you what, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go to bed,” Biden, 80, joking during a riff in response to a question about why he hasn’t spoken to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The president was in Hanoi following the multi-day Group of 20 summit in New Delhi, India, where he basked in the absence of Xi and Russওian President V♛ladimir Putin.
“I’ll just follow my orders here. Staff, is there anybody that hasn’t spoken yet? I ain’t calling on you,” Biden said at another point during the presser Sunday.
Biden dusted of෴f some of his favorite one-liners and at times appeared to invent new ones as he fielded a barrage of questions from rep๊orters.
“The Indian looks at John Wayne and points to the Union soldier and says, ‘He’s a lying, dog-faced pony soldier!'” Biden said in response to a question about climate change.
“Well, there’s a lot of lying, dog-faced pony soldiers out there about global warming,” he added.
Biden also came prepar𓆏ed for🅠 some quips from reporters.
“Thank you, Mr. President. I hope you didn’t think that calling only on women would get you softballs tonight,” Voice of America correspondent Anita Powell said at one point.
“If you sent me a softball, I wouldn’t know what to do with it, I’d probably strike out even worse,” Biden joked in response.
The president also contextualized the geopolitical undertones of his trip to Asia, namely in relation to China, which loomed large even in Xi’s absence.
“What this trip was about — it was less about containing China. I don’t want to contain China,” Biden contended. “I just want to make sure we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away.”
Xi is believed to have skipped the G20 summit due to frayed relations with host nation India.
He dispatౠched Chinese Premier Li Qiang th🥃ere on his behalf.
Biden postulated during the press conference that China’s now-sputtering economy would dampen the prospects of an invasion of Taiwan.
However, many experts have feared that China’s economic situation would fuel desperation in Beijing and bolster the odds of an invasion.
“I think China has a difficult economic problem right now for a whole range of reasons that relate to international growth and lack thereof and the policies that China has followed,” Biden told reporters.
“I don’t think it’s going to cause China to invade Taiwan; matter of fact, the opposite. It probably didn’t have the same capacity that it had before.”
At the end of the press conference, Biden was cut off mid-sentence by an aide who said the press conference was𝕴 over.
Following his pitstop in Hanoi to shore up relations with leaders of Vietnam, widely seen as a strategically important Asia Pacific ally, Biden is expected to jet off to Alaska, where he will mark the 22nd anniversary of the 9𓃲/11 terror attacks.
