In an interview with Russian state television on Wednesday, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that he prefers Joe Biden to Donald Trump. “He is a more experienced, predictable person,” Putin said, sounding eminently reasonable. “He is a politician of the old school.”
Putin is entitled to state his beliefs on state-sponsored television, but maybe it’s best not to take him at his word. Russia has, of course, interfered in the last two U.S. elections. And one 2024 candidate has sent billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine as it staves off a Russian invasion and has been pushing lawmakers to free up more money as the war drags on — while the other leaned on his Republican supporters in the House to scuttle a bill that would do so. After killing that legislation (at least temporarily), Trump said in a campaign speech that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO member countries that do not spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. It’s not very plausible that Putin actually prefers Biden — more likely, he doesn’t want to hurt Trump’s chances by giving him the seal of approval.
Putin also commented on his interview last week with Tucker Carlson, who traveled to Moscow to listen to the Russian president prattle on about ninth-century history. Somewhat surprisingly, Putin did not seem to enjoy Carlson’s sycophancy. “I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions,” Putin said. “He chose a different tactic. He tried to interrupt me several times, but still, surprisingly for a Western journalist, he turned out to be patient.”
Carlson, undeterred by this harsh assessment, is still squeezing content out of his visit. He posted videos of himself on the Moscow subway, comparing the famously grand system to the ones in America, where you will find, in his words, “bums or drug addicts or rapists.” Carlson also hit a Russian grocery store, where he explained how angry he became when he realized that $400 worth of groceries in the U.S. cost just $100 in his new favorite place.
“If you take people’s standard of living and you tank it through filth and crime and inflation and they literally can’t buy the groceries they want, at that point maybe it matters less what you say, or if you’re a good person or a bad person. You’re wrecking people’s lives and their country, and that’s what our leaders have done to us,” Carlson said.
If you like this sort of commentary, you can subscribe to Carlson’s new website and see what he has to say about Russian McDonald’s.
