DM Monitoring
MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Saturday that Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s description of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “murderous dictator” exposed how politicians in Washington sought to impose their views on the world.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s comment was the latest jab in exchanges revolving around the US presidential election and the Kremlin’s more than 2 1/2-year-old war in Ukraine.
“The lofty political establishment of the United States of America, to all appearances, is infused with such a political culture,” Russian news agencies quoted Peskov as telling a television interviewer.
“This is probably the quintessence of the very model of international relations that they are trying to foist on the entire world, a model that most in the world are beginning to like less and less.”
Peskov’s comments appeared to be in response to Harris’s criticism of a report in a newly released book by US journalist Bob Woodward that Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, while in office, had sent COVID tests to Russia at the height of the pandemic. In a radio interview, she described Putin as a “murderous dictator”.
With relations between Russia and the United States plunging to depths not seen since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, each side has told the other to stop discussing domestic issues.
The United States told Putin to stop commenting on the US election back in February and then again last month when the Kremlin leader suggested he favoured Harris over Trump in the forthcoming poll because of her “infectious laugh”. That exchange prompted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to say that Putin “often jokes” in his public statements.
According to summaries of Woodward’s book by the Washington Post and the New York Times, US President Joe Biden was privately scathing about several foreign leaders, including Putin, whom he described as the “epitome of evil”.
Earlier, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, released a letter from her doctor on Saturday that pronounced her in good health and fit for high office, in an effort to draw a contrast with her counterpart, Donald Trump.
In a memo distributed by the White House, the vice president’s physician, Joshua Simmons, said Harris’s most recent physical exam in April was “unremarkable,” that she maintains an active lifestyle and “very healthy diet” despite a busy schedule, suffers from seasonal allergies and sporadic hives, does not use tobacco and drinks alcohol only in moderation.
“She possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” the doctor wrote.
Harris, 59, is running against Republican Trump, 78, for the White House. She made her medical information public on Saturday in an effort to draw attention to his refusal to do so, according to a Harris aide.
Harris said Trump’s reluctance to provide a detailed medical reports is the latest example of his lack of transparency.
“I think that it’s obvious that his team, at least, does not want the American people to see everything about who he is,” Harris told reporters before boarding a plane to North Carolina.
