Biden calls Putin a 'crazy SOB'; the Kremlin says his comments debased America

Vladimir Putin is a “crazy SOB,” President Joe Biden said Wednesday — a direct stab at the Russian leader that drew a furious reaction from the Kremlin.

In comments at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Biden also took aim at former President Donald Trump, ridiculing his likely opponent in the November presidential election for comparing himself to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last week.

Discussing climate change, Biden also made a brief diversion to note that the world should be worried about Putin’s repeated nuclear threats against the West.

“We have a crazy SOB, that guy Putin and others and we always have to be worried about a nuclear conflict,” he said. “But the existential threat to humanity is climate.”

His comments came after the Kremlin criticized Biden for what it described as a poor attempt to sound like a “Hollywood cowboy.”

“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 said. “But it debases those who use such vocabulary.”

But when he was asked about Biden's comments in an interview with Russian propagandist reporter Pavel Zarubin, Putin joked about them.

“Listen, we talked not long ago. And you asked who would be preferred as future president of the United States,” Putin said. “I said that we would work with any president. But I suppose that for us, for Russia, Biden is more preferable. Judging by what he has just said, I was absolutely right.”

Biden has a tendency to go off script during election fundraisers and in recent months has used these more informal events to criticize China, the Republican Party and U.S. ally Israel.

But in recent days he