The Kremlin reacted with predictable fury on Thursday after President Joe Biden publicly called his Russian counterpart a “crazy SOB,” with a spokesperson for Vladimir Putin accusing the Democrat of making the sweary comment as part of a failed “Hollywood cowboy” act.
Biden made the remark at a fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday night while discussing the relative threats of nuclear war and climate catastrophe. “We have a crazy SOB like that guy Putin and others and we always have to worry about nuclear conflict, but the existential threat to humanity is climate,” Biden told donors, according to Reuters.
On Thursday, Moscow hit back with some insults of its own.
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“The use of such language against the head of another state by the president of the United States is unlikely to infringe on our president, President Putin,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters. “But it debases those who use such vocabulary.”
Peskov added that Biden’s comment was “probably some kind of attempt to look like a Hollywood cowboy.”
“But honestly I don’t think it’s possible,” Peskov continued. “Has Mr. Putin ever used one crude word to address you? This has never happened. Therefore, I think that such vocabulary debases America itself.” He reportedly ended the screed by calling Biden’s language a disgrace for the U.S.
Ardent Putin supporter Dmitry Medvedev was also apparently upset about Biden’s comments. He said the real existential threat to humanity was from “useless old geezers, like Biden himself.” The former Russian president also accused the American leader of being “senile” and “ready to start a war in Russia.”
The Kremlin has already hit out at Biden and other Western leaders for accusing Putin of being responsible for the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Biden said the incarcerated Putin critic’s demise “was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.” Peskov said such allegations were “absolutely rabid” and unacceptable. The ongoing war in Ukraine and U.S. concerns about Russia putting nukes in space have also contributed to strained relations between Washington, D.C. and Moscow, which are now at their worst state since the end of the Cold War.
The White House was forced to deny that Biden had made NSFW comments about another world leader earlier this month. A report claimed that the Democrat had privately called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “bad fucking guy,” with Biden spokesperson Andrew Bates saying the president “did not say that, nor would he.”
Biden also upset the Donald Trump campaign with his comments at the fundraiser. The president scoffed at his Republican rival likening his legal troubles to the suffering Navalny endured, with Trump telling a Fox News town hall this week that the $350 million judgment in his business fraud case was “a form of Navalny.”
“If I stood here 10 to 15 years ago and said all this, you’d all think I should be committed,” Biden said at the fundraiser. In response, a Trump campaign spokesperson told Politico: “Crooked Joe Biden is saying the quiet part out loud, he should be committed because of the total failure he has been for this country, and the misery and destruction he has caused.”
