On Sunday evening, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly kicked off her new show on NBC.
Her premiere’s focus?
The first U.S. television interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin since the election of President Trump.
Kelly began by questioning Putin on Russian interference in the U.S. election. Until recently, Putin had completely denied any involvement with the hacking. But in the last few weeks he made a rare slip, suggesting that ”patriotic” but non-governmental Russian citizens may have been involved.
Putin responded with a rant against the U.S. media and intelligence community.
He denied any hacking had taken place. Kelly was taking his comments out of context, he insisted. Putin denied the Russian ambassador had briefed him on any meetings with Trump campaign officials. Claims to the contrary, he suggested, were laughable. And Putin pushed back directly against the U.S. media. ”You create a sensation out of nothing. And out of the sensation you turn it into a weapon of war against the current president … you people are so creative over there. Your lives must be so boring.”
Putin then suggested that it ”can’t be ruled out” the CIA killed President John F. Kennedy. And if they could do that, Putin said, they could easily pretend that Russia had hacked the U.S. election. This was vintage Putin gamesmanship. On the one hand, the Russian leader is playing to rising anti-U.S. intelligence community sentiments on the Trump-right. Simultaneously, he’s giving a smiling one-fingered salute to the U.S. intelligence community. He takes immense pleasure in teasing them.
Next, Kelly asked Putin about his December 2015 RT dinner in Moscow with former U.S. national security adviser Mike Flynn. Putin said he didn’t even know who Flynn was until after the dinner had finished. This was the interview’s most amusing moment. Putin lives for espionage. There is no way that he would have sat down with a former director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and not have known it. Putin sat down next to Flynn for one of two reasons. Either because he never believed Flynn would enter the U.S. government (Putin would never have allowed Flynn to be so publicly identified with Russia if he believed the former general had a chance of ending up in the White House) and wanted to show the former general that he owned him. Or simply to annoy the U.S. intelligence community.
Questioned as to whether he had compromising information on Trump, Putin said the query was itself ”nonsense.” He denied Russia spies on western visitors. Then, perhaps reminding Trump that Russia does indeed spy on visiting officials, Putin stated ”there was a time when [Trump] used to come to Moscow…” Whatever Putin meant by this, it was an interesting choice of words. As I noted on Friday, Putin is a master of intrigue. His comments cannot be taken at face value.
Still, perhaps the most interesting exchange came at the end. Kelly asked Putin to respond to allegations that he murders journalists and political opponents (he does). Putin’s response illustrated his focus shifting to Russian domestic opinion. Playing to Russian populist notions of American arrogance, he asked Kelly who she was to ”give us lessons” on democracy. Perceptions of American lecturing play very badly in the immensely patriotic Russian heartland. Putin knows it. And he knows that weaponizing this pride is the source of his sustaining power.
All in all, it was a short but beneficial interview. Kelly asked tough questions and pushed Putin. And if nothing else, she unveiled his true face: a calculating killer, but one who revels in the intelligence game. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Putin is the KGB colonel who never truly left the KGB.
