US President Joe Biden on Thursday delivered a defiant argument for a second term in his state of the union speech, vowing to “not back down” in Washington’s opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Freedom and democracy are under attack both at home and overseas at the very same time,” Biden said as he appealed for the US Congress to support Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russia’s two-year-old invasion. “History is watching.”
Biden has been held up by the US House of Representatives, which is struggling to approve funding bills and has been deadlocked for months on foreign assistance bills to help Ukraine and to support Israel’s fight against Hamas.
Photo: Bloomberg
In Moscow yesterday, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev called Biden a “mad” disgrace to the US shortly after the US leader had finished speaking and said he had no right to compare himself to former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Biden opened his address with a reference to a 1941 speech to the US Congress in which Roosevelt said the union faced an unprecedented turning point in history.
Biden also accused former US president Donald Trump — his apparent Republican opponent in November’s election — of kowtowing to Russia and, just over two weeks after calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB,” said he had a message for the Russian president on Ukraine: “We will not walk away.”
“Even though Roosevelt was an infirm man in a wheelchair, he raised America from the depression; Biden, on the other hand, is a mad, mentally disabled individual who set his mind on dragging humanity to hell,” Medvedev wrote on X.
“Roosevelt together with allies including the USSR, was fighting for peace; yet, Biden is actively and persistently trying to start WWIII,” he wrote, referring to the former Soviet Union and the possibility of another world war.
“Roosevelt was fighting against fascists, but Biden is fighting for them,” Medvedev wrote in English. “He is the United States’ disgrace!”
The war in Ukraine has triggered a deep crisis in Russia’s relations with the West, and Biden angered Russian officials with his “crazy SOB” comment.
Putin said that the remark showed why the Kremlin felt Biden was a preferable future president to Trump.
Biden made that remark in a sentence about threats to the world including “that guy Putin and others,” the risk of nuclear conflict and the existential threat to humanity from climate change.
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