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Set aside the kayfabe that a president is the one in charge and making all the decisions in the executive branch. The main part of his role is as a figurehead and he can't even do that. Making clownish mistakes like this in matters of high end foreign policy is terrible optics for the US like you've said.
I can only image some PR wonk in his team came up with the idea of "Joe, you need a win to distract from this whole senior thing, so lets try to set up a show where you're brokering peace in the Ukraine" or some such nonsense. Then Biden does what he does and digs his hole even deeper.
To be fair, Trump used to fire from the hip with comments and tweets and the white house would then have to scramble to realign and 'clarify' his statements.
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