Earlier this week, President Biden appeared to veer off script in the middle of his ‘blame Putin, not our idiotic policies, for your collapsing cost of living’ speech, when he dropped the ‘g’ word…

“Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide half a world away.”

As the world waited for another rapid walk-back by White House staffers of another Biden gaffe, the 79-year-old doubled-down…

“Yes, I called it genocide. Because it has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of being able to be Ukrainian.”

The comments sparked reactions from around the diplomatic world.

French President Emmanuel Macron was the most outspoken, refusing to back Biden’s claim that Russia is committing “genocide” in Ukraine. The French leader instead warned that an escalation of rhetoric wouldn’t bring peace.

On the same day Biden accused Russia of genocide, Newsweek published an article quoting a senior official from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency who said the civilian casualties in Ukraine are typical of modern warfare and “hardly” amount to genocide.

The DIA official: said “I am not for a second excusing Russia’s war crimes, nor forgetting that Russia invaded the country.”

“But the number of actual deaths is hardly genocide. If Russia had that objective or was intentionally killing civilians, we’d see a lot more than less than .01 percent in places like Bucha,” the official emphasized.

As expected, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov responded, according to Reuters, emphasizing the hypocrisy of a US military machine which has committed “well-known crimes” in the recent past.

“This is hardly acceptable from a president of the United States, a country that has committed well-known crimes in recent times,” Peskov described.

All of which leads to the weekend and a rather shocking report from no lessor mainstream media outlet than NBC News.

NBC News reported on Friday, citing senior government officials, that President Biden’s accusation made earlier this week that Moscow was committing “genocide” in Ukraine has raised concerns among officials in the White House and has not been confirmed by US intelligence agencies.

The claim of genocide “has so far not been corroborated by information collected by US intelligence agencies,” the report said.

Worse still, NBC quoted two State Department officials as saying that Biden’s remarks “made it harder for the agency to credibly do its job.”

“Genocide includes a goal of destroying an ethnic group or nation and, so far, that is not what we are seeing,” a U.S. intelligence official said.

NBC did provide some cover however in a later paragraph, claiming that there is concern within the intelligence community that Russia’s actions in the next phase of the war could amount to genocide, and one official said that assessment could be part of what prompted Biden to take a public position that’s ahead of his own government.

What is perhaps more shocking about this is the fact that it is NBC News that is reporting this – not a good look for a president who relies significantly on the mainstream media to clean up his messes with gaslighting and memory holes.

In case you wondered, the official word from The White House is comical in its brevity:

“These aren’t gaffes,” said one person close to the White House. “He’s doing this very purposefully.”

As the world tip-toes towards WWIII, should we be reassured by that?

Republished from ZeroHedge.com with permission

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