Vladimir Putin laughs off Joe Biden’s claim he’s a ‘killer’ (but fails to deny it) and dismisses the US president as a ‘career politician’ while praising Donald Trump as ‘extraordinary, talented and colorful’
- Putin, 68, spoke to NBC News on Friday ahead of his meeting with Joe Biden
- Biden meets Russia’s leader – who he has known for decades – on Wednesday
- In March Biden said that Putin was ‘a killer’ – remarks that made Putin chuckle
- The Russian president said that he hoped to have a stable relationship with U.S.
- He described Trump as ‘colorful’, ‘talented’ and ‘extraordinary’
- Putin said questions about deaths of Russian dissidents were ‘verbal indigestion’
- He said reports of him backing Iran’s satellite program were ‘nonsense garbage’
- Biden has previously said he confronted Putin and told him he had no soul
Vladimir Putin burst into laugher when asked if he is a killer – and heaped praise on Donald Trump, before branding Joe Biden a career politician.
The Russian president guffawed when NBC correspondent Keir Simmons asked him: ‘Mr President, are you a killer?’ during an interview broadcast Friday night.
He avoided directly answering, instead replying: ‘Over my tenure, I’ve gotten used to attacks from all kinds of angles and from all kinds of areas under all kinds of pretext and reasons and of different caliber and fierceness, and none of it surprises me.’
‘So as far as harsh rhetoric I think this is an overall expression of US culture. Of course in Hollywood, there are some underlying deep things in Hollywood – macho, which can be treated as cinematic art. But that’s part of US political culture, it’s considered normal. By the way, not here, it is not considered normal here.’
Putin was speaking in Moscow ahead of his June 16 meeting with President Biden in Geneva. Biden said earlier this year he believed his Russian counterpart was a killer, while Donald Trump did not give a direct answer when asked the same question during his time in office.
Simmons pushed Putin further on the matter, saying: ‘I don’t think I heard you answer the question, a direct question, Mr President.’
Putin – who appeared to bristle at being pushed further, said: ‘I did answer, I did answer. I’ll add if you let me. I’ve heard dozens of such accusations, especially a period of some great events during our counter terrorism events in northern caucuses.
‘When that happens, I’m always guided by the interests of the Russian people. The Russian state. In sentience of terms of who calls somebody who, in terms of labels, this is not something I worry about in the least.’