No one should be fooled when President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly declared that it would be better for Russia if President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2024 election. In an interview with Russian state TV (an English-language transcript of the interview was published on the Kremlin’s presidential website) on Wednesday, Putin was asked by journalist Pavel Zarubin, “Who would be better for us? Biden or Trump?”
The interview took place after a special counsel Robert Hur released a report on Biden’s handling of classified material that found that no charges should be brought. But it included a gratuitous comment that Biden would present himself to a jury “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
So Zaludin asked the 71-year-old Putin about the “mounting wave of speculation around the world” concerning Biden’s health, adding that “the president of one of the world’s biggest nuclear powers” is displaying “very peculiar, to put it mildly, scenes almost every day.”
Putin dismissed concerns about Biden’s age with faint praise, describing the last time they met in Geneva, Switzerland, in June 2021.
“Three years ago, there were already those back then who were saying that he was unfit for office. I did not see anything of this sort. Well, he did keep glancing at his notes but, to be honest, I looked at mine too. Nothing special about that. And the fact that he banged his head on something when descending from a helicopter, well, who of us has never banged his head on something, let them throw the first stone, as the saying goes.
“Overall, what I think … I am not a doctor, so I do not think that I can make any comments on this topic.
But then he got in a dig at Biden: “I believe that the current administration is pursuing what amounts to a harmful and erroneous policy.”
It should be noted that Russia was already spreading disinformation regarding Biden’s mental health during the 2020 presidential election, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. And it’s pretty clear that Putin was engaged in some trolling by seemingly trying to distance himself from Trump at a time when he needs him more than ever back in the White House. Last week, in a two-hour-plus interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Putin only mentioned Trump once. After emphasizing that he had “a very good relationship” with President George W. Bush, Putin said: “I had such personal relationships with Trump as well.”
White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby had a pretty blunt response when asked about Putin’s comment whether a Biden administration would be more stable and better than a Trump administration at a news conference Thursday:
”I think Mr. Putin knows very well what this administration has been doing to — to counter Russia’s malign influence around the world and certainly what they’ve been doing inside Ukraine.
“We’ve demonstrated over and over and over again how willing we are to push back on what Russia is doing, again, particularly in Ukraine. And Mr. Putin should just stay out of our elections.”
Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, described the Zaludin interview to The Wall Street Journal as follows:
”It’s both a typical KGB-style debunking that has nothing to do with real politics at all, and trolling under the cover of serious reasoning. There are no practical consequences from this interview, there’s no room for negotiation, no hints for an exit from this disaster.”
And The New York Times wrote:
One post by a pro-Kremlin blogger called the interview a “fantastic session of midnight trolling” that may have been meant to benefit Mr. Trump, given that a Putin endorsement is not necessarily an advantageous one in American politics.
And that is especially true after the announcement that Russian opposition Alexey Navalny had died in an Arctic prison as Putin’s totalitarian regime has intensified its crackdown on opponents since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Biden wasted no time releasing a statement placing blame: “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,”
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It’s no secret that a Biden defeat in the 2024 presidential election is of existential importance for both Putin and Trump. A Trump victory could be a get out of jail free card for the former president who is facing 91 federal and state charges in four criminal indictments. And with Trump back in the White House, the Russian president could turn his disastrous Ukraine invasion into something of a victory if Ukrainians are forced to accept a bad peace deal due to the withdrawal of U.S. support by Trump.
In May 2023, The Daily Beast wrote that Putin had even more reason to meddle in the U.S. presidential election than in 2016 when Russians hacked Democratic Party computers and waged a social media campaign on behalf of Trump. Russian TV propagandists have continually declared their support for Trump, even praising him as a “destroyer” of America. And prominent MAGA Republicans have openly expressed their pro-Putin sentiments.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and MAGA House members, at Trump’s urging, have blocked $60 billion in urgently needed aid to Ukraine that Biden first requested in October.
So what was Putin up to in the interview? The New York Times wrote:
Some commentators quickly dismissed Mr. Putin’s comments as a provocation or perhaps as a roundabout attempt to weigh down Mr. Biden’s campaign by saddling him with the endorsement of one of America’s main adversaries.
It was also the latest in a series of comments by Mr. Putin that seemed aimed at keeping tensions with the United States in check, coming at a time when other developments — such as jitters about Russia’s possible plans to deploy a space-based nuclear weapon — threaten to exacerbate the strains in the countries’ relations.
Mr. Trump stunned policymakers this past week when he said that he would invite Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO member countries that had not met their commitments on military spending.
Putin was asked in the interview about Trump’s comments about NATO and described Trump as “a non-system politician” who “has his own ideas about how the U.S. should develop its relations with its allies.” He noted Trump’s comments about NATO members paying the U.S. for protection and said, “It is their problem, they need to work it out for themselves.”
But he then went even further than Trump in criticizing NATO: “I personally believe that there is absolutely no point in NATO. Its only purpose is to serve as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. If the United States considers this tool no longer necessary, that is their decision.“
Biden condemned Trump’s NATO threat in no uncertain terms, saying:
“No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator. Well, let me say this as clearly as I can: I never will. For God’s sake, it’s dumb, it’s shameful, it’s dangerous, it’s un-American.”
And for Trump, Putin’s supposed preference for Biden is a lifeline at a time when he’s being deluged with criticism regarding his threat to disregard NATO treaty obligations and his opposition to further aid to Ukraine. Trump said that instead of grants, U.S. military assistance to Ukraine should be in the form of loans.
Last September, Putin endorsed Trump’s repeated claims that he could bring Russia’s war with Ukraine to an end very quickly if he returned to the White House. “Mr. Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said at an economic forum in Russia. “We cannot help but feel happy about it.”
Trump then said in an NBC interview that he enjoyed hearing that he had drawn praise from Putin. “I like that he said that. Because that means what I’m saying is right.”
But Trump was singing a different tune at a campaign rally Thursday in South Carolina. Trump said he considered it “a great compliment” that Putin would rather have Biden as president than him.
He then proceeded to give an answer that defied credibility. He claimed that he would settle the war between Russia and Ukraine “very quickly.” And he doubled down on his remarks about NATO.
And Trump, who has fawned over Putin, actually said:
“Putin is not a fan of mine … i got along good with him, but he doesn’t want to have me. He wants to have Biden because he’s going to be given everything he wants, including Ukraine. … He’s going to have his dream of getting Ukraine because of Biden. The whole thing is just crazy.”
And he added that the war in Ukraine “never would have happened if I was president. Under the Trump administration, we will return to peace through strength.”
The Washington Post said that Putin’s “whiplash in rhetoric—at times positive, at others critical” about someone like Trump is “typical of the Russian autocrat.”
Over the years, Putin has proved himself the master of trolling, with a penchant for one-liners that often throw or silence his interlocutors. He has also, on occasion, praised his U.S. counterparts — though his ultimate motives are never entirely clear. Poised to win his own reelection bid in March, Putin has now encountered 24 years’ worth of U.S. presidents, from Bill Clinton to Biden.
The article then proceeded to give examples of “Putin’s praise—at times faint, at other times feigned” of U.S. presidents—from calling President Barack Obama “a decent man” for saying that the U.S. military intervention in Libya may have been his greatest mistake in office, to calling Trump “talented” and “lively” in December 2015 just before the first Republican nominating contests. But regardless of who Putin touts from one moment to another, one thing is clear: It’s always going to be about who can deliver on what Putin wants.
