President Joe Biden's decision to speak on the second day of the United Nations General Assembly and not its first, using the excuse of traveling back from attending the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on Monday, "signals weakness on the world stage," former U.S. Ambassador Ric Grenell told Newsmax as the gathering of world leaders was beginning Tuesday.
"Biden cannot get himself physically together to get up here to make his typical speech time, and the White House will spin on that and say, Oh, you know, we're, you know, meeting some other time," Grenell, now a senior national security analyst for Newsmax, told "Wake Up America."
"The tradition is that Brazil speaks first, followed by the host country, which is the United States."
This means the president is to speak second, on the first day of the General Assembly, but "Joe Biden is not doing that because he needs to get rested up," Grenell said.
It is not only unprecedented, but that means that Biden will be speaking within a day of Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, who said this week he has no plans to meet with Biden or any other U.S. leaders on the sidelines of the event, even though negotiations over reviving the Iran nuclear deal remain on hold.
Raisi, though, said his appearance at the U.N. is an opportunity to talk to the world about the "malice" that other nations, which he did not name, have toward his country. He will address the General Assembly and a UNESCO meeting about religions.
Grenell said the leaders' speeches are "very big for their hometown audiences, their home country audiences."
He also talked about Trump's speech to the United Nations four years ago, when Germany leaders "mocked" him for his warnings about the nation's dependence on Russian oil and gas.
"What I found most fascinating about when that happened in 2018 is the fact that we were four years removed from the invasion in Crimea in 2014," said Grenell, who served under Trump. "We knew that Vladimir Putin had plans to try and take the rest of Ukraine, if possible when the moment was right, and that moment was Feb. 24, 2022."
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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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