US President Joe Biden has called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB” during a fundraiser in San Francisco, as well as taking aim at his predecessor, Donald Trump, for comparing himself to a Russian opposition leader who died last week in an Arctic prison.
Biden was talking about climate change when he said, “We have a crazy SOB like Putin and others, and we always have to worry about nuclear conflict, but the existential threat to humanity is climate.”
Biden has previously called others a “son of a bitch”. In January 2022, he was caught on a hot mic using the same term of abuse about a Fox News White House reporter.
Speaking to donors at a private San Francisco home on Wednesday as part of a three-day swing through California to raise money for his 2024 reelection campaign, Biden also said he was astounded by recent comments made by his likely Republican challenger.
Trump compared the suspicious prison death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to his own legal troubles in the US. Trump was fined $350m after a New York judge found he lied for years about his wealth on financial statements in his companies. Trump said the ruling was a form of “communism or fascism.”
“Some of the things that this fellow’s been saying, like he’s comparing himself to Navalny and saying that – because our country’s become a communist country, he was persecuted, just like Navalny was persecuted. I don’t know where the hell this comes from,” Biden said.
“I mean, if I stood here 10, 15 years ago and said any of this, you’d all think I should be committed,” he said. “It astounds me.”
Biden has a tendency to go off script during election fundraisers and in recent months has made apparently unplanned remarks about the Chinese president, the Republican Party and US ally Israel for its bombing of the Gaza Strip.
Biden’s verbal attacks against Putin have also sharply intensified at the White House and on the campaign trail. Last week, the US president blamed Putin and “his thugs” for the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
“We don’t know exactly what happened, but there is no doubt that the death of Nalvany was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did,” Biden said at the White House after Russian prison officials announced that Navalny had died.
The Kremlin has denied involvement in Navalny’s death and said western claims that Putin was responsible are unacceptable.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
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