Photos reveal that President Joe Biden brought detailed notecards from his staff on Monday for a series of questions at the White House about his off-the-cuff statement on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During the question and answer session at the White House, Biden read from a notecard prepared by his staff on whom to call on for a question.
Another notecard captured on camera showed Biden’s “Tough Putin Q&A” notes, with detailed questions that Biden would receive from reporters and detailed bullet points of how he should answer them.
“I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the actions of this man,” one prepared answer read.
“I was not articulating a change in policy,” another prepared answer read.
At the beginning of his question and answer session, Biden dutifully responded using his prepared answers.
“The fact of the matter is I was expressing the moral outrage I felt toward the way Putin is dealing, and the actions of this man — just — just the brutality of it,” he replied.
“I was expressing the moral outrage I felt towards this man,” he said afterward. “I wasn’t articulating a policy change.”
Biden has previously used notecards during his remarks with reporters with bullet points on key issues, but his notes on Monday demonstrated a new level of detail.
However, the president soon went off-script, berating Fox News reporter Peter Doocy for being “silly” and, at one point, briefly losing his temper with a woman reporter who asked him if his comment unnecessarily escalated the conflict with Putin.