Incidentally during the campaign speech
Biden calls Putin a “crazy bastard”
February 22, 2024, 5:00 a.m
The violent death of Kremlin critic Navalny in a Russian prison camp outraged the leaders of the Western world. US President Biden apparently follows up his feelings with explicit words. He calls Putin a “son of a bitch”, loosely translated: a crazy bastard.
US President Joe Biden took a harsh swipe at Russian President Vladimir Putin at a campaign event in the state of California. At a speech in San Francisco on the West Coast on Wednesday evening (local time), Biden described the Kremlin chief as a “crazy SOB,” according to press representatives traveling with him. The abbreviation “SOB” stands for “son of a bitch” in English, a swear word whose unflattering range of meanings extends widely: from “bastard” or “shithead” to the very literal and rather unusual translation “son of a bitch “.
At the point of the speech, Biden actually spoke about climate change as an existential threat to humanity and only mentioned Putin in passing. In essence, he said that there are crazy bastards like Putin and that there is always the danger of a conflict involving nuclear weapons, but the real existential threat to humanity is climate change.
Putin has already been called a “butcher” and a “war criminal”.
The 81-year-old spoke to a small group of his campaign’s donors. At events like these, which are not broadcast live on television, Biden sometimes tends to speak more freely. The Democrat, who is hoping to secure a second term in November’s presidential election, has used the insult before. When a Fox News reporter asked the president a question on the sidelines of a public appearance in Washington in January 2022, Biden murmured for all to hear as his microphone was still on: “What a stupid son of a bitch .” The expression is quite common in the USA and is considered less vulgar compared to other insults.
Biden has already called the Russian president a “butcher” and “war criminal” in the past. After the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Russian custody, Biden announced “significant” sanctions against Russia for Friday. Regarding Navalny’s death, he said that the reports did not surprise him, but that he was outraged. Navalny courageously stood up against the corruption, the violence “and all the bad things” that the Putin government had done. “Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” said the US President in his first reaction in Washington.