President Biden is expected to offer remarks on Tuesday afternoon regarding the coronavirus pandemic White House response. The afternoon press briefing was added to his schedule.
Add to the schedule: 4:45 PM: THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks on the fight to contain the COVID-19 pandemic
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 26, 2021
His address on the coronavirus pandemic comes a day before our first public health briefing is scheduled. The public health briefings are scheduled to take place three times a week, following the first one tomorrow.
While the briefing this afternoon is focused on the coronavirus pandemic, if President Biden is asked questions, it’s likely that his phone call with Russian President Putin will come up. Probably more than one-time.
The White House provided a readout of the call:
President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. They discussed both countries’ willingness to extend New START for five years, agreeing to have their teams work urgently to complete the extension by February 5. They also agreed to explore strategic stability discussions on a range of arms control and emerging security issues.
President Biden reaffirmed the United States’ firm support for Ukraine’s sovereignty. He also raised other matters of concern, including the SolarWinds hack, reports of Russia placing bounties on United States soldiers in Afghanistan, interference in the 2020 United States election, and the poisoning of Aleksey Navalny.
President Biden made clear that the United States will act firmly in defense of its national interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies. The two presidents agreed to maintain transparent and consistent communication going forward.
White House.gov. 01/26/2021.
Russia posted their own read out of the call:
Vladimir Putin congratulated Joseph Biden on the beginning of his work as President of the United States.
He noted that the normalization of relations between Russia and the United States would meet the interests of both countries and – taking into account their special responsibility for maintaining security and stability in the world – of the entire international community.
The Presidents expressed satisfaction in connection with the exchange of diplomatic notes carried out today on reaching an agreement on the extension of the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Arms.
In the coming days, the parties will complete all the necessary procedures to ensure the further functioning of this important international legal mechanism for the mutual limitation of nuclear missile arsenals.Topical issues of the bilateral and international agenda were discussed.
The possibilities of cooperation in the fight against such an acute problem as the coronavirus pandemic, as well as in other areas, including trade and economic, were considered.Among the international topics were the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the Open Skies Treaty, the problem of preserving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the Iranian nuclear program, internal Ukrainian settlement, as well as the Russian initiative to hold a summit of permanent members of the UN Security Council.
kremlin.ru. 01/26/2021.
On the whole, the conversation between the leaders of Russia and the United States was of a businesslike and frank nature.
It was agreed to maintain contacts.
Like I said, the focus is on the coronavirus, but if questions are asked they generally stray to other lines of thought.
Live Feeds.
Yahoo Finance.
CBS News.
The White House.
On Tuesday the CDC reported that there are 25,152,433 people in the U.S., infected with the coronaivurs. 419,827 people have died.
