In his strongest response yet to American election interference, President Joseph R. Biden revoked the diplomatic license plates of all 517 Russians assigned to their five consulates in the United States.
“I’m not kicking them out,” Biden told a news conference. “But those plates are like gold, man. I mean, they never get parking tickets and if police ticket them the Russians – and every other diplomat from every other country, I might add – just laugh and rip them up.
“They can park in a no-parking zone, next to a fire hydrant – hell, with those plates they probably could park on top of a cop – and not get fined or towed. Well, those days are over, Jack. Let’s see how the Rooskies like having to look for a parking space in Washington, D.C., or midtown Manhattan or anywhere else in our beautiful country.”
Biden said expelling 500 or so diplomats from the Russian consulates in the nation’s capital, New York, Houston, San Francisco and Seattle would work a hardship on relations between the two nations, “and worse, think about all the hardships it would lay on the diplomats and their families, having to give up their fancy houses or apartments and country-club memberships and tables at the best restaurants and all the other benefits, making them go back to dreary Moscow or Gusinoozyorsk and Maloarkhangelsk and Zheleznodorzhny and all those other godforsaken places nobody can pronounce.”
Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said Biden’s “aggressive behavior” will undoubtedly receive a strong response involving the U.S. embassy in Moscow and its two consulates in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg. But she acknowledged that revoking the diplomatic license plates of American vehicles in Russia likely would not happen because it would be pointless.
“Everybody parks anywhere they want – in crosswalks, on traffic islands, in intersections, on sidewalks,” Zakharova said. “They just leave their car wherever it’s convenient. Parking rules are only occasionally enforced and when they are the fines are small, if they’re paid at all.”
Biden said among other sanctions he already has instituted against Russia includes shutting down the direct pipeline from the White House to Vladimir Putin’s office that Paul Manafort, chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, had set up.
“If Putin still wants to know which fast food Trump’s having for lunch or what right-wing cable show he’s watching, he’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way,” Biden said, “by asking one of the spies he’s got working in the Mar-a-Lago kitchen.”
In an unrelated matter, Biden said that as a favor to Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Nativist, he was nominating Rep. Matt Gaetz to be the U.S. ambassador to Thailand and expects near-unanimous approval by Republicans in the Senate.
Biden said McCarthy had made the suggestion because sending Gaetz, R-Fleshpeddle, to southeastern Asia “would be ridding his party of what he called ‘the biggest burr under their saddle’” and might persuade the GOP to be more cooperative with other issues.
“Kevin kind of caught me off-guard when he said Thailand,” the president said, “but when he told me it’s one of the most, um, troublesome spots in the world for child sex trafficking and that Matt Gaetz might have a handle on that, I agreed to give it a try. Besides, our embassy’s in Bangkok. How perfect is that?”
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