Russian President Vladimir Putin made a series of headline-making statements in his latest round of remarks to his nation’s press.
Perhaps most striking was his comment that he’d prefer to see President Joe Biden win reelection in 2024 over former President Donald Trump.
Biden “is a more experienced person, he is predictable, he is a politician of the old school,” Putin said on Wednesday, before adding: “But we will work with any U.S. leader whom the American people have confidence in.”
The Russian leader also defended Biden amid criticism of his mental acuity and age, saying that when he met Biden in Switzerland in 2021, “they were already saying that he was incompetent; I didn’t see anything like it.”
Some pundits have chalked Putin’s comments up to trolling, and the New York Times pointed out in its report that “a Putin endorsement is not necessarily an advantageous one in American politics.”
At a campaign event in South Carolina, Trump responded to Putin’s purported dig, calling it a “great compliment.”
“I stopped Nord Stream 2, and [Biden] approved it right after I left, so Putin is not a fan of mine actually,” Trump said, referring to the Biden administration’s decision to waive the Trump-era sanctions in 2021.
“[Putin] doesn’t want to have me. He wants Biden because he’s going to be given everything he wants, including Ukraine,” Trump continued. “He’s gonna have his dream of getting Ukraine because of Biden … The only president in the last five that hasn’t given Russia anything is a president known as Donald J. Trump.”
But the dig at Trump was far from the only bombshell comment Putin made to the press.
He also reportedly said he regrets not launching Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine sooner, and that Tucker Carlson’s sit-down interview left him unsatisfied due to his softball questions.
“To be honest, I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions,” Putin said, saying he wanted that “because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way.”
“Frankly, I did not get full satisfaction from this interview,” he said, adding that Carlson “turned out to be patient, listened to my lengthy [monologues], especially those related to history” and “did not give me a reason to do what I had been prepared to do.”
