Pushkov blasts Obama for telling UN 'US exceptional'

US President Barack Obama should not have told the UN General Assembly session that "the US is exceptional", State Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Alexei Pushkov said. "Obama should not have spoken about US exceptionality from the UN podium. He presented his dispute with Putin to an international panel of jurors and that was a mistake," Pushkov wrote on Twitter on Wednesday morning, Voice of Russia reported. Obama called his country exceptional at a session of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. "Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional. In part because we have shown a willingness, through the sacrifice of blood and treasure, to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interest, but for the interests of all," Obama said. "The danger for the world is not America: The danger for the world is that the United States : may disengage creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation is ready to fill," Obama said. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin argued in his op-ed published by The New York Times earlier in September that the exceptionality of the United States declared by President Obama was a dangerous thesis. "I think it is very dangerous to put the idea of their exceptionality in people's minds no matter what the reasons may be," Putin wrote.