Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

How well reported was this in America?

There's nothing I've been asked more often in recent weeks than, "How did you get an interview with Putin?" I would have liked to tell some great story, but the truth is that I didn't do anything about it.

It went like this: about two months ago, Carola Schneider, the head of the ORF office in Moscow, asked for an interview with the president. She has done this several times before, each time in vain. The Kremlin rejects almost all interview requests. But this time it was different. As Putin was planning a visit to Austria as the first foreign trip of his new term of office, there might be a chance, the Kremlin press office said. But only under certain conditions:

Carola would not conduct the interview, but a "main evening presenter" would have to travel from Vienna. The interview would last 30 to 40 minutes and at least 15 minutes of it would have to be broadcast on the main evening programme. The German translation would have to be agreed with the Kremlin press office. And the Kremlin would publish an unabridged version of the interview (as a video and as a transcript) on its website.

This is standard procedure for international Putin interviews - and an offer you can't refuse, even if it would of course have made more sense to send our knowledgeable Moscow correspondent, who speaks perfect Russian, to Mr Putin.

But that's how I got into the game - and I've tried to prepare myself as well as possible over the last few days, including with some extensive Putin interviews from recent years. And I realised very quickly after watching them that the Russian president would be a very demanding interviewee.

Putin basically knows five response strategies:

1. He usually replies in great detail. Short answers are rare, it almost always becomes a matter of principle.
2. He loves counter-questions - always unpleasant for an interviewer.
3. He is a master of whataboutism - diverting attention to another topic or at least another aspect of the topic.
4. If he wants to deny something, he denies it, no matter how much evidence there is to support the accusation.
5. And if he is interrupted, he immediately criticises it - as rude, impatient or prejudiced. And then continues with his original answer.

[... ... ...]

The President is as expected in conversation: Highly focussed but detailed, he resists every interruption, asks questions back, sometimes becomes mocking, changes the subject more often, goes into deep detail and rejects every accusation. Occasionally he throws in a few German words. But we talk for much longer than expected: instead of the 30 minutes announced, it's 52, until his spokesman signals more and more impatiently that the time really is up.

...

Boris Johnson attacks Tucker Carlson over Putin interview: ‘Hitler playbook’
Former prime minister was one of the first Western leaders to visit Kyiv after Russian invasion of Ukraine

Boris Johnson has attacked Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview saying it was straight out of ‘Hitler’s playbook’.

The American broadcaster has been the “stooge of the tyrant, the dictaphone to the dictator and a traitor to journalism”, he said.

He accused the former Fox News host of betraying “viewers and listeners around the world” for not taking the Russian leader to task for “the torture, the rapes, the blowing up of kindergartens” in Ukraine, “not once did he even try to dam the flow of lies” in a column for Mail+.

Putin’s message to America was straight out of the Hitler playbook, he said “Stay out of this conflict... — and soon we can all be at peace.”

The only difference was that Hitler delivered his message, in June 1940 shortly after he invaded France, through the newspapers of WR Hearst and a German-American journalist called Von Wiegand, he suggested.

Earlier Rishi Sunak labelled “clearly ridiculous” Putin’s claim the West and Nato are to blame to the war in Ukraine.

Mr Johnson also attacked on the allegation the UK government persuaded the Ukrainians to fight on, rather than surrender in the wake of the invasion in the spring of 2022.

“Nothing and no one could have stopped those lion-hearted Ukrainians from fighting for their country — and nothing will,” he said.

He said he hoped and believed that if President Trump is elected again he would “confound his critics… (and) give arms to the Ukrainians”.

[...]

Former prime minister Mr Johnson was one of the first Western leaders to visit Kyiv after Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, he also came under fire for plans to visit the war-torn country after his exit from office. The Independent revealed that senior military figures thought he was “looking for publicity” in a warzone and urged him not to go.

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Thankfully, Putin wouldn’t pull an Israel and utterly destroy villages, towns, and indiscriminately murder civilians

Honestly, even for Lash's "world view" this is a big lie.

There is a daily flood of evidence that Lash commonly spreads profoundly uneducated claims along with outright falsehoods. And every engagement with her here serves her purposes as a troll.

Seems like the SS telling people who they can talk to.

Putin a hero? Ukraine a villain? How MAGA has inverted American foreign policy

At the beginning of the war, only 9 percent of Republicans believed the United States was supplying too much aid to Ukraine. Now that number is a plurality of 48 percent.

[Boris Johnson] said he hoped and believed that if President Trump is elected again he would “confound his critics… (and) give arms to the Ukrainians”.

...No longer part of a party with any ideas, Republican politicians prioritize attacking and belittling their opponents, not uplifting their constituents. In 2020, the GOP literally rejected having any party platform. Instead, it wanted to be able to pivot in support of whatever utterance came out of Trump’s mouth.

Since then, it has gotten worse. Virgil’s ghost is still leading the faithful down the Republican Inferno.

Take for instance, how the GOP spends money on elections. Even as it prepares for 2024, the party is spending more and more of its money each year to undermine free and fair elections in court. In 2021, the Republican Party was responsible for 25% of all anti-voting lawsuits filed across the country. In 2022 it was 52%. Last year, it was 68%...

Tomasz Łakomy@tlakomy
16h
The only person who should interview Putin

Tucker Carlson's arse licking session.

It wasn't an interview, it was a rant by Putin with nothing at all from Fuckup Carlson.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump told thousands of members of the National Rifle Association that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” if he returns to the White House, and bragged that during his time as president he “did nothing” to curb guns.

“During my four years nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing. We didn’t yield,” he said as he addressed the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Friday evening.

Casting himself as ”the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House,” Trump pledged to continue to protect gun owners’ rights, even as the country grapples with a crisis of gun violence and mass shootings that have left more than 3,000 dead since 2006.

“Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president,” he said.