The political pundits who serve as the smiling faces of Russia’s many state-run “news” channels are feeling a lot less cheery these days. Sure, they’re still putting their trademark pro-Putin spins on the events of each day—at least those events that the Kremlin allows them to talk about. But given that much of the world has united in its support of Ukraine and condemnation of Vlad for attacking the sovereign state, Russia’s news anchors are feeling a bit left out. Luckily for them, they’ve still got an ally in at least part of the Fox News team (with a couple notable exceptions).
As The Daily Beast reports, the Russian media is downright giddy over some repugnant comments retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor made while appearing as a guest on Fox’s Sunday Night In America With Trey Gowdy. When asked about the escalating war between Russia and Ukraine, Macgregor—who served as Senior Advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense during the Trump years—suggested that the people of Ukraine just give up already and bend the knee to the Almighty Putin. Macgregor also said that we, as Americans, need to stop demonizing Putin and accept that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the comedian-turned-president of Ukraine who voiced Paddington in TWO movies:
We need to remember that Ukraine is fourth from the bottom of 158 countries in the world, at corruption. Russia is perhaps three or four places above them. This is not the liberal democracy, the shining example, that everyone says it is, far from it.
Mr. Zelensky has jailed journalists and his political opposition.
I think we need to stay out of it. The American people think we should stay out of it, the Europeans think we should stay out of it, and we should stop shipping weapons and encouraging Ukrainians to die in what is a hopeless endeavor.
Gowdy, making sure he understood Macgregor correctly, clarified: “Just let Russia take that portion of Ukraine that they want to take?”
Macgregor’s answer: “Absolutely.”
Meanbwhile, some of Gowdy’s Fox News colleagues have condemned Macgregor’s statements—most notably Jennifer Griffin, who was on the air with Gowdy just a few minutes after all of that pro-Putin gobbledygook. Even former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, of all people, criticized his former network for not stepping in. But while Americans may be aghast at Macgregor’s comments, Russian media figures are saluting him.
“Russian state media flooded their programs with translated clips of Macgregor’s proclamations, using them in support of their own messaging designed to demoralize the Ukrainians,” Julia Davis wrote for The Daily Beast.
But Russian propagandist Vladimir Soloviev—who has been complaining to anyone who will listen about how Russian sanctions have caused him to lose access to his precious pair of Italian villas—was totally Team Macgregor. “Macgregor is expressing his tough position on Ukraine,” Soloviev said. “Will he also be sanctioned by the European Union?”
If only!
(Via The Daily Beast)