Biden has a 'great deal of ... ego' in his foreign policy ability, 'gets very defensive': MSNBC host

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Putin sets sights on taking all of Ukraine, not just Donbas region

National security correspondent Jennifer Griffin has the latest from the Pentagon on 'Your World.'

MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell said Monday that President Biden believes that he is going to emerge victorious from the facedown with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that he has "confidence" and "ego" in his foreign policy abilities.

Mitchell added that Biden feels "defensive" about criticism of his foreign policy performance. Notably, Robert Gates, the former defense secretary under President Obama, said that Biden has "been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."

President Biden  (Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"I actually think that Joe Biden has a great deal of ego and a great deal of confidence in the foreign policy ability and gets very defensive about some of the criticism from his past from people like Bob Gates, the former defense secretary who described him very coldly and critically," Mitchell said on "Deadline: White House."

Mitchell continued, "I don’t think that he sees himself being tested [by Putin]. I think he feels that he is up to this task. And that it’s … Putin who will end up mired in Ukraine the way America was enmired in Afghanistan for 20 years."

A Russian "Uragan" self-propelled multiple rocket launcher system launches a rocket during military exercises at the Opuk training area in Crimea, February 15, 2022.  (Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS)

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Guest host John Heilemann raised a letter from Ambassador Bathsheba Nell Crocker, which stated that Russia was prepared to commit human rights violations to achieve its expansionist ambitions into Ukrainian territory. 

Crocker's letter alleged Russia was identifying "specified Ukrainians … to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation." It further says that Russia plans to use "lethal measures to disperse peaceful protests or otherwise counter peaceful exercises of perceived resistance from civilian populations."

President Putin  (Yuri Kochetkov/Pool)

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Heilemann asked Mitchell whether the Biden administration preparing sanctions meets the moment given the "chilling" report. 

"If the stuff that's in this letter takes place, the U.S. reaction is going to be sanctions? Is that plausible that that would be the U.S. response to war crimes, atrocities, human rights abuses on the scale of the type that's outlined in this letter?" he asked. 

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Mitchell answered, "I don't know how to answer that, because you're right."

"This is Ukraine on the doorstep of Russia, and the president said in his interview with Lester [Holt] [that sending troops in] would be world war. That was two weeks ago. I don't know how they would deal with it," she continued. "But I would assume that … people … sent to camps … would be in Russia proper – and that would raise a whole new level. They're not going to put them in camps in Ukraine, which is where they're going to be involved in ongoing insurgency."