As the internet is rife with commentary about the Tucker/Putin interview, why not moi?
I have history with Vlad. I said something nice about him in a column on antiwar.com and that should qualify me as a paid shill.
I'm not angry about someone accusing me of being a paid shill if I'd actually been paid.
It was in 2014 and Putin did a couple of smart things. He did not go to war in Ukraine when Vicky Nuland started screwing up and he kept Obama from the consequences of his vaunted red line.
So, I did my sycophantic best to suck up and do I hear from him? No one from the FSB bumps me in an alley and hands me an envelope.
And, I trusted Hillary Clinton. Well, I'm living proof that Putin is not tossing filthy lucre to any scrivener and I'm not happy about it.
Even before that, I was a toady on antiwar.com. With a piece entitled Deja Russia All Over Again from May 3, 2014. In it I quoted Russia hand Suzanne Massie, who knew Vlad as saying, "Putin does not eat babies." Such things are not done, yet still no douceur.
Ah, but I am merely a naïf and my countrymen and women wouldn't be duped by slick Vlad and his puppet.
But, The actual record is in Vlad's favor.
Under the Soviets, it was an agricultural basket case. Now, it sets records for wheat production.
According to a commenter, Arnaud Bertrand, on X, "…infant mortality in Russia is now 25% lower than in America, always a particularly good indicator of a society working reasonably well (or, in the case of America, not working well). When Putin took over in 2,000, infant mortality in Russia was 164% over America's…"
I hope Monsieur Bertrand is wrong. I doubt he is.
Life in this country is not getting better, yet administration partisans will claim "Bidenomics" a success, ever touting "inflation is down," which is ridiculous as only the rate of increase has moderated and only until next month's revisions.
So, I would still be in Camp Putin if he had sent some moolah my way, but I am not going to debase myself without a payoff.
As to the interview, I didn't like it, not for the same reason I'm guessing most Americans tuned out after 20 minutes.
My countrymen and women hear his declaiming on history and their eyes glaze over as they did in high school. Moi, as a history nerd, I've been paying attention to Russia for a long time. Hardly an expert, it was still going over a lot of at least semi-familiar ground.
Still, I stuck with it and it was informative and should have been listened to by an American audience.
It was said to have over a hundred million viewers which is a vast compared to so-called American new shows. It is thus possible the viewership that actually paid attention dwarfed the mainstream from Fox to NPR.
If that is so, it is the reason the "progressive" front from Hillary, on had to vilify listening to the interview as being in Putin's pocket…or something.
Well, I am someone who is not in the pocket, unless Vlad pays up.