President Biden’s incendiary call for Russia’s Vladimir Putin to be removed from power Saturday sparked fevered speculation on cable news channels — with hosts openly wondering whether the dictator might be murdered.
“In terms of potential regime change, how does [Putin] get overthrown?” Fox News host Eric Shawn asked a guest, national security analyst Rebecca Grant.
“Does he get assassinated? Does he got pushed out? Does he get under house arrest? Does he get told, you gotta go to your dacha on the Black Sea for the rest of your life, get out? How does it end?”
Biden closed his much-anticipated speech in Warsaw by forcefully declaring, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
“Absolutely, [Biden] did call for regime change,” Grant told Shawn. “I think that’s unprecedented in U.S-Russian diplomatic history. That puts US-Russo relations in the deep freeze.”
But she dismissed the idea that Putin would be removed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP“We’d all like to see no more of Putin, but I think it’s very unrealistic at this point,” Grant said.
“Let’s see if the State Department or White House tries to walk that back later or not,” she added.
Minutes later, a White House official did just that.
“He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” the unnamed official hastily told members of Biden’s traveling press pool.
