Another Gratuitous Biden 'Gaffe'

Maybe there is a time and a place for the president to offer up his opinions about foreign leaders, but Biden has a knack for picking the wrong ones.

The president doesn’t seem to know when to stop talking:

President Biden ended his first meeting with President Xi in more than a year by reiterating his belief that the Chinese leader is a dictator, drawing a strong rebuke from Beijing after what both sides said were constructive talks.

The U.S. and China had made some limited but real progress on a few issues ahead of the summit, and it seemed as if the Biden-Xi meeting in San Francisco might be chalked up as a modest success thanks to the extremely low expectations going in. Biden’s remark won’t cancel out the gains that were made, but it does add another irritant to a relationship that already has far too many. There was no compelling reason for Biden to answer this question the way he did, and it was bound to antagonize the Chinese side (and it did) without gaining the U.S. anything.