Russian official mocks Navy Yard shooting Posted on September 16, 2013



A Russian official blasted “American exceptionalism” in a tweet Monday morning, saying the deadly shooting at Washington’s Navy Yard confirms the worst about the U.S.

“A new shootout at Navy headquarters in Washington — a lone gunman and 7 corpses. Nobody’s even surprised anymore,” tweeted Alexey Pushkov, a member of the Russian parliamentary foreign affairs committee.

“A clear confirmation of American exceptionalism,” he added, according to multiple translations of the original Russian tweet.

Mr. Pushkov went on in English to say that American exceptionalism “contradicts the principles of equal rights and smells of political racism.”
The comments — met with disgust on Twitter on Monday, as the situation at Navy Yard continued to unfold and the death toll pushed into the double digits — echo the recent New York Times op-ed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In the piece, Mr. Putin blasted U.S. exceptionalism and admonished Americans to remember that God has created everyone equal.
Like Mr. Pushkov’s tweet, Mr. Putin’s comments fueled outrage from U.S. lawmakers and many others.
The U.S. Embassy in Moscow responded directly to Mr. Pushkov on Twitter in Russian, saying “What is exceptional here? Why use a tragedy for a set of political points?”