World leaders saw President Joe Biden's decline firsthand during this week's NATO summit in Washington, D.C., and with his news conference, Robert Wilkie, a former secretary of Veteran Affairs, told Newsmax on Friday.
"I'm looking at the headlines from the major European newspapers," Wilkie, who served in the cabinet position under former President Donald Trump, told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "It is a disaster for the United States … The Daily Telegraph, their editor in chief said America looks like an international joke, [writing] 'Batman can't save America from Joker Biden.' And it goes on and on with the left and the right in Europe."
He also pointed out that new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer "had to deny three times that the president of the United States is out to lunch, so that's a biblical experience for him."
Starmer, in an interview with Sky News, said that when he met with Biden this week, he believed him to be mentally agile, not senile, reports The Telegraph.
Meanwhile, Biden's Cabinet members were sitting in the front row during his press conference, and Wilkie said they are "just as out to lunch as the president is."
"This is a Cabinet where the secretary of defense disappeared for ten days and nobody knew it," Wilkie said. "This is a Cabinet that has not met together since the first week of October because the Biden family is even hiding his infirmities from his own Cabinet."
Under Trump, Wilkie said, the Cabinet met every three weeks "and after the press went away, we hashed out policy and the president grilled every one of us about what we were doing. It was a real working cabinet, these folks are just as out to lunch as the president is.
Meanwhile, there is a "cringeworthy moment" every time Biden goes out, and the Cabinet has "lost control of their departments," said Wilkie.
"They've lost control of their place in the international community," he added. "But remember, these are very weak players to begin with."
Wilkie also commented on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was seen Thursday morning rolling her eyes and checking her watch while waiting for Biden and NATO Secretary Gen. Jens Stoltenberg to show up Thursday morning and open the summit's third day.
"Meloni is the new Iron Lady of Europe," said Wilkie, adding that he's been meeting "quietly" with European prime ministers and defense ministers in recent days.
"It's not official," he said. "I get the same reaction. They see America as leaderless. They see our leadership as feckless. This is the hour of maximum danger for them, because, as we know, it's not just about [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. Putin is actually the minor player in this. It's about China and what Meloni wanted to do was have someone in the U.S. leadership focus on China as the puppeteer."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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