It turns out even strongmen can be a bit sensitive from time to time. American authoritarian-in-training Donald Trump is famously thin-skinned, firing off misspelled tweets at all hours to respond to critics, big and small, real or imagined. On Monday, the Kremlin showed its sensitive underbelly when it asked for Fox News to issue an apology to Vladimir Putin after host Bill O’Reilly described the Russian president as a “killer” during an interview with Trump over the weekend. Meanie. A Kremlin spokesman said O’Reilly’s description of Putin was “insulting” and “unacceptable.”
“We consider such words from the Fox TV company to be unacceptable and insulting, and honestly speaking, we would prefer to get an apology from such a respected TV company,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on a conference call with reporters. It’s unclear if Peskov’s referring to Fox News as a “respected TV company” is meant as a joke, I’m not all that familiar with Russian sarcasm.
