Kirby Snaps at Newsmax’s Rosen About China and Russia: That’s Criticism ‘Posing As a Question’

Newsmax’s James Rosen and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby engaged in a spirited back-and-forth over whether President Joe Biden should label the Russian and Chinese regimes “evil” on Wednesday.

Rosen alluded to the fact that he and Kirby had sparred over the subject before during Zoom briefings held by the White House as well as past presidents’ use of the label before diving into the heart of the matter.

“If you have governments that are running concentration camps or launching unprovoked wars where hundreds of thousands of people are being killed and the president of the United States calls the leader of that regime a war criminal, I don’t see what it is that prohibits you from calling a spade a spade and saying ‘these are evil regimes,’ which you refused to do in our earlier colloquy,” submitted Rosen.

“Well I appreciate your advice on policy, and I’ll take that back, James,” replied Kirby with some disdain. “But the president’s never been one-”

Rosen interjected to insist that he had asked a “simple question,” which Kirby disputed:

No, no, no no. It’s not a simple question, James. It’s a criticism that you’re posing as a question. You’d like to see us put a label on these two countries and President Biden just doesn’t conduct foreign policy that way. I think, go look at the national security strategy, go look at the national defense strategy, take a look at anything that the president has said over his time as commander-in-chief about Russia and China and you’ll see that we are speaking pretty plainly to the American people and to those countries and those leaders about how we view their behavior, their conduct on the world stage and our relationships with them. We’ve been very, very honest about that.

Watch above via C-SPAN.