Exclusive | Biden’s cognitive decline emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine, Sen. John Kennedy tells ‘Pod Force One’

Former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline was so pronounced that it imperiled US foreign policy by providing an “invitation” to dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Sen. John Kennedy told “Pod Force One.”

“I remember when Putin was lined up on the Ukrainian border, thinking of going in, weighing his option, watching President Biden have a short press conference and say, ‘Well, if it’s a small incursion, it might be OK,’” Kennedy (R-La.) told The Post’s Miranda Devine on the latest episode, out Wednesday.

“I’m thinking, Holy Moses, that’s an invitation,” added the Louisiana Republican, reflecting on the January 2022 press conference, during which Biden went off the rails while responding to criticisms of his agenda raised by the White House press corps.

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“It depends on what [Russia] does,” Biden said at the time when asked about Putin’s plans. “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.”

Kennedy recalled thinking at the time that the president’s rhetoric “was dangerous.”

“I think he just started rambling,” the senator said, before rattling off other foreign policy flubs. “Afghanistan. [Biden] removed the sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. He removed the sanctions on Iran from selling their oil. Now, President Xi in China is working with Putin and Russia and the Ayatollah in Iran, they see all this.

“They’re working together, and they saw the president, who was not clearly in grasp — didn’t have a clean grasp on all of his faculties. They saw the weakness, and they made their move. And that’s how Ukraine started,” he added.

Kennedy also claimed that he could see the Democrat’s “neurodegenerative disease … got worse” over time.

“I figured his staff was getting maybe four hours, five hours of work out in the day. He couldn’t help it,” The Republican claimed. “His staff cleverly hid it until they couldn’t anymore. He had the debate in front of God and the country and the American people — and the American people saw it, and they said, ‘Look, this man is just, he’s like my grandpa, you know, who I just took the car keys from.’”

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Kennedy, 73, said he spent 45 minutes with the oldest-ever president during the first year of his presidency after a bill-signing event at the White House.

The two discussed their love of dogs and other interests, but Biden “had reached a point in his life … when I could tell all he wanted to do was sit around, tell war stories, talk about the good old days.”

“And then when he was done, he wanted some hot soup and an early bedtime,” Kennedy went on, quipping that Biden’s mental acuity was so diminished that “to paraphrase a former Louisiana governor [Edwin Edwards], it would take him an hour and a half to watch ’60 Minutes.’”

“And we all knew it, but we couldn’t — His staff would not let any of us, not just Republicans, but Democrats, around him,” he said. “Even the cabinet, they kept him totally isolated, and you could see bits and pieces of it when he would talk and sound like he was from outer space, and my people back home in Louisiana would say, ‘Who is really the president?’ And I’d tell ’em the truth: ‘Whoever the hell has control of that teleprompter.’”

Kennedy claimed that by the end of Biden’s term he didn’t “believe he was working more than … probably three hours a day, and you can’t do that job on three hours a day.”

The two-term senator’s new book, “How to Test Negative for Stupid: And Why Washington Never Will,” was published Oct. 7.