McCarthy, speaking on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News on Tuesday, criticized Biden over his handling of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
At one point, the California Republican appeared to mis-speak and instead of saying Biden is not standing up to Putin, he said the president was not standing up for the Russian leader.
Clips of this moment have begun appearing on social media and have already been viewed over 200,000 times on Twitter.
“Now Saudi Arabia is talking about selling China oil and taking the yuan in payment,” McCarthy said.
“This would devalue the American dollar as the world currency, a plan they had for quite some time.
“Not only are the enemies around the world dissing this president, now our allies disrespect this president.”
McCarthy then claimed that Biden was showing weakness. He insisted Biden should supply weapons to Ukraine and praised President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“This is a weakness that he [Joe Biden] has shown time and again, he won’t stand up for Putin.
“Give the Ukrainians the MiGs, let them fly the no-fly zone. Ukraine has never asked for American men and women to fight for them, all they ask is ‘Give us the weapons so that we don’t have to fight with sticks.’
“One thing we have seen from this Ukrainian president, he is willing to stand up, he’s going to speak to us tomorrow in the middle of a city that is under siege, with Russians all around him, with the desire to say ‘Give me weapons so I can fight for freedom and defeat Putin’.”
McCarthy was mocked by some Twitter users for his comments with some questioning whether he had made a Freudian slip.
“Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy whines that President Biden ‘won’t stand up for Putin’ in an embarrassing Freudian slip on Fox News,” left-wing media outlet Occupy Democrats tweeted.
“Breaking: [Kevin McCarthy] wants U.S. to ‘stand up for Putin,’” sports commentator Keith Olbermann said on Twitter as he tweeted the video.
“Kevin McCarthy says the quiet part out loud,” Dr Jorge Caballero, co-founder of Coders Against COVID, joked on Twitter while also sharing the video.
Newsweek has contacted McCarthy for comment.
Biden has received some praise for his actions against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine despite the criticism from McCarthy.
Last week, Biden announced that the U.S. would ban the import of Russian oil and move to revoke Moscow’s “most-favored-nation” trade status.
Alongside this, the U.S. has sent more than $1 billion of weapons and military aid to Ukraine in the last year.
However, a majority of Americans are not reassured by these steps. New polling by CBS News/YouGov released on Sunday showed that 54 percent of U.S. adults say Biden’s response to the war makes them feel “insecure.”
An even larger segment of the population (63 percent) say the response from the president makes them feel “nervous.” Only about a third said the response makes them feel “confident” (33 percent) and “secure” (32 percent).
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