Biden Snaps at CNN Reporter, Suggests She Might Be in the 'Wrong Business' (VIDEO)

Published: June 16, 2021
  |   By Cassandra MacDonald

By Cassandra Fairbanks

President Joe Biden became quite testy with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at his Geneva press conference on Wednesday.

The exchange took place following the president’s press conference regarding his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As Biden went to leave, reporters began shouting questions in an attempt to get his attention. One of them succeeded by asking about Americans detained in Russia.

“I am not gonna walk away on that,” Biden asserted, stopping to speak to the press.

“Why are you so confident he’ll change his behavior, Mr. President?” Collins asked.

“I’m not confident he’ll change his behavior,” Biden responded. “Where the hell — what do you do all the time? When did I say I was confident?”

The clearly agitated Biden walked up and added, “I’m not confident of anything. I’m just stating a fact.”

“But given his past behavior has not changed — and in that press conference after sitting down with you for several hours he denied any involvement in cyberattacks, he downplayed human rights abuses, he even refused to say Alexei Navalny’s name,” she said. “So how does that account to a constructive meeting?”

“If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business,” the president said before heading off.

Speaking to reporters later on, Biden said that he shouldn’t have been “such a wise guy.”

“Look, to be a good reporter, you’ve gotta be negative. You’ve gotta have a negative view of life, ok, it seems to me. You never ask positive questions,” Biden said. “I apologize for having been short.”

Biden went on to say that if he had answered that he expected a negative outcome it would be “guarantee nothing happens” and that you have to put on a “optimistic front.”

Unlike the indignation that Trump faced from the network when he would snap back at a reporter, Biden received glowing praise from her network after the incident.

“He certainly he was comfortable in that moment, taking off his jacket, answering they questions from top foreign policy reporters in the audience that he doesn’t always call on,” CNN’s Jeff Zeleny commented.

Collins herself also defended Biden, saying that apologizing for the way he handled her question is “completely unnecessary.”

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