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Putin says he prefers Biden to Trump and mocks
Tucker Carlson’s questions
Russian president says Biden is ‘more predictable’, in
remarks likely to be attempt to make mischief in US election
Pjotr Sauer
Thu 15 Feb
2024 21.36 CET
Vladimir
Putin has said he would prefer a Joe Biden presidency to a Donald Trump one and
mocked the former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson for a “lack of sharp
questions” during their interview at the Kremlin last week.
Asked by a
Russian state journalist on Wednesday to choose between Biden and Trump, Putin
said without hesitation that the current US president was “more experienced,
predictable, an old-school politician”, but added: “We will work with any US
president who the American people have confidence in.”
It was the
first time Putin had spoken about the forthcoming US presidential elections, at
a time when Kyiv waits anxiously to see if the US House of Representatives will
approve a critical wartime aid package for Ukraine.
The Russian
president also dismissed worries over Biden’s age and mental acuity, saying he
had not noticed any issues with his American counterpart during a meeting in
2021.
“Even then
[three years ago], people were saying that he was incompetent, but I did not
see anything of this sort,” he said. “Yes, he kept looking at his papers, but
to be honest I kept doing the same. So there was nothing peculiar.”
The White
House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, said: “I think Mr Putin knows
very well what this administration has been doing to counter Russia’s malign
influence around the world … Mr Putin should just stay out of our elections.”
Earlier
this week, Trump said in a rally with his supporters that he would encourage
Russia to invade countries that did not meet their Nato obligations, sending
shockwaves through the ranks of European leaders.
Critics of
Trump accuse the former president of a predisposition to be sympathetic to
Putin. His years in office have been tainted by a US intelligence report that
said Russia had interfered in the 2016 White House race to help Trump defeat
Hillary Clinton.
Trump has
recently been lobbying Republican lawmakers to vote against the Senate-approved
$95.34bn military aid package.
In
contrast, Biden has been a longtime critic of Putin, calling him a “killer”,
even before the invasion of Ukraine. Under his administration, the US has
provided roughly half of all the foreign military assistance to Ukraine’s
arsenal since the start of the war.
Putin
described US support for Ukraine as “harmful and mistaken” and praised Trump
for casting a shadow over Nato’s long-term future.
Russia’s
cautious backing of the current US president, a fierce critic of the Putin
regime for years, is likely to be an attempt by Putin to sow chaos into the
already polarised US elections. Putin’s guarded endorsement is unlikely to be
met with cheers by the Biden camp, given the Russian president’s pariah status
in the west.
Commenting
on Putin’s remarks at a rally in South Carolina, Trump said that Putin had
given him “a great compliment, actually”.
“He just
said that he would much rather have Joe Biden as president than Trump.”
In the same
interview on Russian state TV on Wednesday, Putin also said he did not get
“much pleasure” from last week’s two-hour interview with the conservative
presenter Carlson, because the questions had not been sharp enough.
“To be
honest, I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp
questions. I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give
me the opportunity to respond in the same way,” Putin said in comments
broadcast on Wednesday.
Carlson,
who is known for his anti-Ukraine stance, was criticised by many in the west
for the lack of tough questions in the interview, much of which was taken up by
Putin lecturing the conservative host on his distorted views of Russian and
Ukrainian history and recycling some of his well-trodden grievances meant to
justify the war in Ukraine.
Putin last
gave an interview to western media in 2021, when he spoke with a reporter for
CNBC. He has largely ceased speaking to independent media, both Russian and
international, since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since 2021,
he has only given interviews to Russian, Kazakh and Chinese media.
Putin said
that Carlson had “tried to interrupt me several times” but praised the
conservative journalist, who is close to Trump, for his “patience” when
listening to his “long speeches, especially those related to history”.
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