As many have noted, President Joe Biden has been a gaffe machine his whole life. Like others afflicted with chronic garrulity, Biden often overstates, misstates and exaggerates. Sometimes he’s just plain wrong.
But if a gaffe is what happens when a politician blurts an obvious truth out loud, it’s hard to understand the criticism that developed when Biden made this statement on Oct. 6 in connection with the prospect that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin might use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as an ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
Biden’s customary critics on the right weighed in. Former national security adviser John Bolton asserted that Biden “overstated the gravity of the situation we’re in right now.”
