Presidents Biden and Putin are trading barbs as of late, albeit through interpreters and intermediaries. At a California Democrat fundraiser, Biden called Putin a “crazy SOB,” while Putin sarcastically responded in so many words that he [Biden] could have said, “Volodya, well done, thank you [for the endorsement], you’ve helped me a lot.”

Biden’s “crazy SOB” remark came during a speech about climate change where he reiterated his claim “the existential threat to humanity is climate.” When asked to comment on Biden’s “SOB” jab, Putin referred to his earlier endorsement he gave Biden over former President Donald Trump. From this exchange, Vladimir Putin’s comments are the ones deserving our attention.

Putin’s remarks broach the broader and more serious question: who does Russia -- along with other potential U.S. adversaries -- want to see in the White House come November 2024? Who would Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping prefer to face in a staredown when the stakes are high and objectives are Ukraine, Taiwan, or the South China Sea? Which candidate would Iran, North Korea or the Latin cartels prefer to see in the White House?

We should take the Russian president at his word with his endorsement of Biden. Every international autocrat, dictator, and warlord would almost certainly want an increasingly frail President Biden with declining faculties over the nationalistic and assertive Donald Trump who would openly adopt a more robust “America first” leadership approach to defense and foreign policy.

Plus, why would Vladimir Putin want a President Trump when actual events suggest he could achieve Russia’s objectives more easily and at less cost with Biden remaining in office, whose actions, behavior, predilections, and temperament Russia has observed and benefited from? In Joe Biden, Russia -- i.e., Putin -- likely assesses a president (along with his present advisors and cabinet members) as more interested in globalist designs from Davos, Dubai, and Turtle Bay than in confronting tough issues like Middle East proxy wars, Russian revanchism, nuclear proliferation, or NATO solidarity.

Russia has watched President Biden, as we all have. They observed him as Barack Obama’s vice president. Then, the U.S. obliged the Kremlin by canceling missile defense systems for Central Europe. Putin noted U.S. facilitation of the transfer of large uranium assets to Russia. An Obama Administration's fuzzy line in the sand indecisiveness over Syrian chemical weapons made way for Russia’s effective military intervention in Syria. Putin must have approved of President Obama's concessions to Iran for the nuclear deal, and it was Obama who notably told former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that Vladimir Putin should give him more "space" and that "after [his] election, [he] would have more flexibility." On the Obama-Biden watch, Putin would conduct his first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 to seize Crimea.

Early in his own presidency, Biden lifted his predecessor’s sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (while cancelling the domestic Keystone pipeline), giving Putin a big concession to set the tone. He further canceled Trump-era border policies beginning a rush of illegals now challenging U.S. sovereignty. In June 2021, he lifted Trump sanctions on Iran’s national oil company to revive the nuclear agreement as well as enabling that nation to engage in a strategic alliance with Russia. In Geneva, Biden met Putin, but instead of warning Russia not to hack any American sites, he gives him a list of 16 critical infrastructures he must not hack. Then in August, Biden presided over a harried, chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that likely was the green light for Russia to invade Ukraine. In December 2021, Biden, watching the Russian military build-up along Ukraine’s border, warned Putin of dire consequences if Russia invades, but in February 2022 Russia attacks Ukraine. Finally in mid-2022, Biden traveled to meet the Saudi crown prince -- a nation he once pledged to make a "pariah" -- having to lobby for more oil production amid record high U.S. gas prices.

In contrast, from the start the Trump administration implemented a more uncompromising U.S. policy vis-à-vis Russia. Russia felt, in that administration’s first year alone, consequences of more assertive U.S. defense and foreign policy. In November 2017, the U.S. approved the $10.5-billion sale of Patriot anti-missile systems to NATO ally Poland in the face of perceived Russian aggression. In December that same year, the U.S. authorized transfer of lethal anti-tank weapons to Ukraine to help that nation fight off Russian-backed separatists. U.S. troop presence in Eastern Europe increased over Obama-era levels to bolster European defenses against Russia, and the U.S. imposed monetary sanctions targeting bad individual Russian actors and companies instead of sanctioning that nation's sovereign debt.

Further, the Trump administration pushed NATO allies to increase defense spending. In even more direct confrontations, Russian mercenaries and other pro-Syrian regime forces attacking U.S. troops in Syria were killed, while the U.S. under President Trump sanctioned Russian Putin's largest geo-economic project, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe (which Biden reversed). In hindsight, President Trump’s tenure with its more forceful stance likely gave Putin pause over four-plus years for his plans to invade Ukraine until the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

November 2024’s election has parallels with both 2020 and 2016, with the latter instructive that Putin will probably again prefer the Democrat, regardless of any media efforts to cast Donald Trump as a “colluding” Putin ally.

It's likely that Vladimir Putin was just as surprised as CNN to wake up that November 2016 Wednesday morning to learn the "impossible" had happened. Two days before the election, pollsters and statisticians gave Hillary Clinton odds of between 75 and 99 percent of winning the election. Given such overwhelming pre-election consensus, a Clinton victory was probably baked into Kremlin intelligence briefings causing Putin to never really give Donald Trump more consideration. His current endorsement of Biden for a second term -- flattering him with praises like, “he is a more experienced, predictable person” -- is cover-up for knowing what a second Trump administration would mean for checking Russia and its adventurism.

If our nation’s recent past is prologue, global bad actors like Vladimir Putin will instinctively favor the Democrat candidate, particularly with the current Democratic agenda wreaking havoc on the fabric of American society and fomenting chaos with its open-border policies. In the specific case of Biden, by easing sanctions, mollifying Iran, directing the Afghanistan withdrawal calamity, and weakening U.S. energy security, he transmitted the wrong signals to an autocrat who has exercised near-absolute control over Russia for a quarter century. It should come as no surprise that Putin would now endorse Joe Biden for president in a second term instead of Donald Trump.

Image: Kremlin.ru