Joe Biden showed off his massive 30ft table during White House discussions yesterday, dwarfing the 16ft table Vladimir Putin used...
Joe Biden showed off his massive 30ft table during White House discussions yesterday, dwarfing the 16ft table Vladimir Putin used during talks with Emmanuel Macron this week.
Photographs taken during a roundtable meeting with CEOs of electric utilities on Wednesday saw President Biden, 79, hosting discussions on a ginormous 30ft table in the White House state dining room.
As the CEOs sat wearing face masks at either end of the enormous table, Biden went maskless during the meeting as he sat distanced by himself at the centre of the table.
His decision to make use of the huge state dining room table came just days after Russian President Putin hosted a meeting with Emmanuel Macron on a similar lengthy table.
Photographs taken during a roundtable meeting with CEOs of electric utilities on Wednesday saw Joe Biden using a ginormous 30ft table in the White House state dining room
Biden appeared to have one-upped Vladimir Putin with his ginormous table, which was almost double in length to the 16ft table that the Russian leader held talks on with Emmanuel Macron
Pictures from the talks in the Kremlin showed the two leaders sitting around 16ft apart with the help of the long oval table, prompting a flurry of humorous responses on social media.
But Biden has one-upped the Russian leader by hosting discussions on a 30ft table, which measures more than double the one used during Putin and Macron's talks.
The impressive 30ft mahogany state dining room table is surrounded by Queen Anne-style chairs, which were brought into the White House during Barack Obama's presidency.
From 2012 to 2015, the state dining room underwent a gradual refurbishment, with the chairs, which were custom made in North Carolina, replacing a set that was upholstered in a golden yellow fabric.
The state dining room has been home to an array of tables under different presidencies, featuring small round table, a large square dining table and other designs, as a number of refurbishment took place under different presidencies.
During Biden's meeting in the state dining room, he opted to go maskless, a change from days earlier when the President and Jill Biden were spotted wearing face masks outside to walk across the lawn at the White House.
Although Biden often goes maskless while speaking at press conferences, the President has recently been seen wearing a face covering in other meetings and visits.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in December updated its guidance to say that Americans who are fully vaccinated can safely go maskless indoors, or outdoors, with the exception of crowded indoor settings like planes.
The President's mask-wearing parade on Sunday came despite the updated guidance on face coverings and the U.S. seeing Covid cases rapidly fall by half in the past two weeks.
Biden opted to go maskless for the indoor meeting, a change from days earlier when the President and Jill Biden were spotted wearing face masks outside to walk across their lawn
The Bidens - who are vaccinated and boosted - covered their faces as they crossed the White House grounds surrounded by Secret Service agents and the press
He sat a few metres apart from the electric utility CEOs during Wednesday's discussions, but it , although he often goes maskless while speaking at press conferences.
The Bidens - who are vaccinated and boosted - covered their faces as they crossed the White House grounds surrounded by Secret Service agents and the press, even though the risk of an infection outdoors is negligible.
It is not clear who the President, 79, or the First Lady, 70, were protecting or who they felt they needed protection from as the only people walking across the grounds.
It came just months after the Bidens were pictured wearing face masks on a deserted Rehoboth Beach in Delaware while walking their German Shepherd puppy, Commander and accused of mask theater.
Biden's latest roundtable meeting came days after Putin held talks on a similarly massive table with Macron in the Kremlin, which prompted hilarious responses from amused social media users.
The picture of Tuesday's meeting was doctored to show Putin and Macron playing badminton, table tennis and air hockey in a bid to 'decide the fate of Ukraine'.
Other versions mocked Macron and Putin for not holding the talks through a zoom call as they would have been 'closer' and suggested the pair had sat further apart than the distance 'between the Russian troops and the Ukrainian border'.
Others showed Macron speaking into a megaphone so that Putin could hear him from the other end of the table, engaged in a Harry Potter-like duel and likened the meeting to a scene from The Incredibles.
Macron and Putin held negotiations in Moscow yesterday in a bid to diffuse rising tensions over the situation in Ukraine.
Putin has spent months massing some 135,000 troops backed by tanks and artillery on Ukraine's borders, sparking repeated warnings from Washington that he is about to invade.
Meanwhile, the picture of Putin's meeting was doctored to show Putin and Macron playing badminton, table tennis and air hockey in a bid to 'decide the fate of Ukraine'
French officials are touring the talks as a success and claim that they have won concessions from Putin with a promise not to 'escalate' his troop build up.
But there was little sign of a climbdown from the Russian strongman late yesterday when he told a press conference that he wanted to 'stress one more time' that 'if Ukraine joins NATO... the European countries will be automatically pulled into a war conflict with Russia'.
He said states would not 'even have time to blink' before invoking Article 5 of NATO which demands collective defense of members.
But Putin did describe the talks as 'constructive' after using the familiar 'ty' form of 'you' to address the French President, seen as a sign of a good rapport between the leaders.
His comments came after lengthy negotiations with Macron over the crisis in Ukraine, which Putin described as 'constructive' after using the familiar 'ty' form of 'you' to address the French President, seen as a sign of a good rapport between the leaders.
Macron, who will today hold talks in Kiev with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, later told journalists on a plane to Kiev that he and Putin had discussed the possible 'Finlandisation' of Ukraine - making the country neutral - so that 'NATO can coexist with Russia', according to Le Figaro.
That would be an advance on the current negotiating position of the US and NATO and could strain the already rocky transatlantic relationship.
Putin himself did not mention concessions when he spoke to the media after his six hours of talks with Macron in the Kremlin late yesterday and Moscow later denied the claims.
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