This Man . . .

It wasn't a gaffe. It was the truth.

“For God’s sake,” the President said on March 26 in Warsaw, “this man cannot remain in power.”

This man attacked our democracy, subverting one of our two political parties and fucking with the 2016 election to help his mobbed-up puppet take the White House. (Five and a half years later, it’s unclear if the American experiment will survive.)

This man pushed for BREXIT in Great Britain—weakening the United Kingdom, the European Union, and NATO in one fell swoop—and still has his sycophantic apologist at 10 Downing Street. (We don’t know how much Moscow tampered with the referendum vote, because the British didn’t actually investigate that.)

This man is a bosom chum to bloodthirsty despots, odious mobsters, and mercenary chaos agents the world over. (That alleged champion of democracy, Edward Snowden, has been mighty quiet since the invasion.)

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

This man is a mob lord, in bed with the worst criminals on the planet: arms dealers, drug smugglers, sex traffickers, pedophiles.

This man rigs elections in his own country. He imprisons opposition leaders. He throws dissenters out of tenth-floor windows. He tortures to death tax advisors who speak the truth.

This man kills journalists. He kills his own subordinates. He once had a man poisoned for telling people that he was a pedophile. He orders assassinations to take place in other countries.

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

This man stole brazenly from his people. This man stole brazenly from his subordinates. This man stole so much money, and took so much capital out of Russia, that there is not enough left for basic services.

This man put a stop to American couples adopting children from Russian orphanages, out of pique—consigning those children, those orphans, to a much worse life.

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

This man blew up apartment buildings in and around Moscow in 1999, killing some 300 Russians, and blaming his acts of terror on Chechen separatists—all to accrue power.

This man completely leveled Grozny, the Chechen capital.

This man revels in destruction. Ask the people of Georgia or the people of Kazakhstan. This man is indeed a butcher, just as the President said.

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

This man didn’t just bum-rush a comedian and smack him in the face. No, this man invaded a comedian’s country, raped his women, killed his children, displaced his family and friends, destroyed his home, and tried multiple times to kill the comedian dead.

This man tried to poison members of the delegation negotiating a peace deal—including one of his oldest and most trusted comrades.

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

“This speech—and the passages which concern Russia—is astounding, to use polite words,” this man’s creepy press secretary said, with practiced fake indignance, of Biden’s remarks. “He doesn’t understand that the world is not limited to the United States and most of Europe.” But the center of Europe is where this man unleashed his army.

“I would not use that kind of language,” the Chamberlainian president of France tsk-tsk’d. “If a ceasefire is to be brokered, we must not escalate—either through words or actions.” But this man is allowed to pulverize cities whole.

“There’s not a whole lot more you can do to escalate,” a senior Republican Senator criticized, on a TV news program, “than to call for regime change.” But this man is allowed to set the forests around the nuclear plant ablaze.

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

This man is a liar, a thief, and a homicidal maniac. It is not possible to negotiate with a man like that. His word is worth less than a 2022 ruble. How can telling the truth escalate what is already a genocide?

The path to a peace settlement is for this man to pull his occupying forces out of Ukraine—all of Ukraine, including the Donbas region and the Crimea. Until he does that, this man is jerking our collective chain, dick-teasing the free world, wasting our time—and allowing more Ukrainians to die needlessly.

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

This man’s country is just starting to feel the effects of the brutal economic sanctions—witness the various oligarchs boo-hooing to the media this week—and things will get exponentially worse as the crisis drags on.

“Sanctions” is a quaint word for what we’re doing, which is laying waste to the Russian economy. As the President said in Warsaw, “these economic sanctions [are] a new kind of economic statecraft with the power to inflict damage that rivals military might. These international sanctions are sapping Russian strength, its ability to replenish its military, and its ability to project power. And it’s Putin, it is Vladimir Putin who is to blame. Period.”

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

This man has had plenty of opportunity to reverse course. He’s had a full month, which he spent doubling down on his hateful rhetoric and his vicious lies. That grace period is now over. In the weeks and months to come, the crippling sanctions will send Russia back to the nineteenth century. (This man wants to be a tsar? Fine, let him live like Nicholas II.)

When the President said, “I wasn’t articulating a policy change,” it’s because the policy has not changed. It has been the same since the decision was made to annihilate the Russian economy. The coming peace will be of the Carthaginian variety.

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

The purpose of the sanctions is not just for Russia to leave Ukraine. The purpose of the sanctions is regime change. The purpose of the sanctions has always been regime change.

What is the alternative? We can’t go back to the way it was. This man, author of war crimes and atrocities, has incinerated that bridge and cannot retreat, even if he wanted to. As Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, put it: “We heard President Biden loud and clear. . . . We clearly understand in Ukraine that anyone who’s a war criminal. . . cannot stay in power in a civilized world.”

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

This man can’t back down—and neither can we. The Russia expert and Wilson Center fellow Kamil Galeev explains why:

Russia can’t make peace with Ukraine because it would mean Ukraine has won. Once Putin declared them as Nazis and promised to destroy them, he can’t back off. That would mean he tried to finish them and failed. His judgment is weak. That will break his stand within Russian power. However, any agreement between Russia and the West, any de-escalation [or] lifting of any sanctions will have the opposite effect. Russian authorities don’t think they [are] fighting with Ukraine. They think they’re fighting with the West. Putin escalated conflict and the West backed off.

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

The Putin fluffers at the GOP think they caught Biden fucking up, when POTUS spoke to the gaggle of White House reporters who exist for a gaffe or a gotcha:

RNC Research @RNCResearch

Biden again says Putin "shouldn't remain in power"

They have not caught him. Biden did not err in Warsaw, and he did not err in Washington. “I’m not walking anything back,” the President said. “I was expressing outrage of this actions of this man.”

Biden is not going to say the words regime change. But the stubborn fact is that the war in Ukraine—which is to say, Putin’s war on the free world—only ends when “this man” is deposed. The sanctions will be lifted when Lavrov is president, or Patrushev—or, in a better world, Navalny.

This man, this sad little man, has set his course. For him, it’s win or die. And we cannot and will not let him win.

Fortunately, Biden understands the calculus.

For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.

CORRECTION: Original version neglected to account for what Putin did to Sergei Magnitsky.

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Photo credit: White House. Biden in Warsaw.