Fox’s Pete Doocy Questions Biden: ‘Did You Underestimate Putin?’

Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked President Joe Biden if he underestimated Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

“Did you underestimate Putin and would you still describe him the way you did in the summer — as a ‘worthy adversary’?” Doocy asked Biden following the president’s remarks on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden noted that he referred to Putin as an “adversary,” adding, “I did not underestimate him.”

Biden called Putin a “worthy adversary” in June ahead of a diplomatic summit with the Russian president.

“I have met with him. He’s bright. He’s tough,” Biden told reporters at the time. “And I have found that he is a, as they used to say when I used to play ball, a worthy adversary.”

In his exchange with Doocy on Thursday, Biden went on to say that he has “read most of everything” Putin has written and asked Doocy if he’s done the same.

“I’m not being a wise guy,” Biden said. “You heard the speech he made, and almost an hour through his speech is why he was going in Ukraine. He has much larger ambitions than Ukraine. He wants to, in fact, reestablish the former Soviet Union. That is what this is about. And I think his ambitions are completely contrary to the place where the rest of the world has arrived.”

Doocy went on to ask if Biden was confident the “devastating sanctions” he imposed on Russia are “going to be as devastating as Russian missiles, and bullets, and tanks” in Ukraine.

“Yes I am,” Biden responded.

Watch above, via Fox News.