US Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Rand Paul warned that Joe Biden's gaffes and need for cue cards during speeches points to the US president's "cognitive decline", which is something that could pose a "national security risk".
Speaking to Fox News, Paul took a dig at Biden, while also trying to clarify the US' official position on Russia.
According to Paul, Biden "lives in an alternate universe" and his gaffes are being noticed even by left-leaning media outlets.
The senator is not alone in perceiving Biden's recent gaffes as potentially dangerous and escalatory. On Saturday, Biden, speaking in Poland, said that Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power". Later, when addressing US troops, the US president appeared to hint that American soldiers are training Ukrainian servicemen in Poland - something that US officials
had to quickly deny.
When speaking to reporters on Monday, Biden had a cheat sheet with him where he had pre-written questions and answers. Among them was a question "Is this now threatening to splinter unity with your NATO allies?" to which the answer read "No. NATO has never been more united".
During the Monday presser, Biden stood by his claim that "Putin cannot remain in power", but added that by saying this, he was expressing his own moral outrage rather than presenting an official US policy. Following the
inflammatory remark on Saturday, several top US officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, had to assure the public that Washington has "no strategy" to back regime change in Russia.
However, the remark on Putin still made waves, prompting comments not only from the Kremlin, where they reminded the US president that it is up to the Russian people to decide who is in power, but also from across the world. French President Emmanuel Macron, for his part, criticised Biden's choice of words and noted that "the objective" is to de-escalate the Ukraine situation, not vice versa.