Oliver Stone not only is a fantastic director, but he is a pretty damn good interviewer. But what makes this series of interviews is Putin himself. A very intelligent, focused, disciplined man, with a great sense of humor (about some pretty serious shit) and cocky as all get out.
There are parts in the interview where you know he is lying, but there are parts where you really are not sure. You get this sense he doesn’t trust the American government (heck, I don’t) but he also knows he must walk a fine line with us, so he blows the ocassional brown kisses.
He is truly more fascinating than I ever thought he would be. Though you have to read on screen most of the interview, it is well worth it.
Putin is the last real vestige of the Cold War. He is 110% KGB. And he is playing Trump like a fiddle, but Trump’s ego is so big and many of Trumps followers are too simplistic in their thinking to know better. And Trump is in denial about what is really going on with Putin, and Trump’s followers do not have a clue and are complicit in encouraging and feeding Trump’s wanting ego to Putin’s advantage. The only way to explain the Trump/Putin relationship from Trump’s standpoint, absence pure denial and cluelessness, is that through Putin’s strategy, Trump has been promised or encouraged to create an American kleptocracy by Putin and fellow Russian oligarchs at the expense of our democratic values and our historically strong relationship with western Europe.
I like Stone and admire a lot of the work he has done, but when he asked Putin in this interview about how Russia does it with a defense budget which is 1/8 of the US defense budget, I thought that question was either very naive or too placating for me to handle. It isn’t that the Russians do not want a larger defense budget, but their economy is much smaller than the US economy and that is simply why its an 1/8 of the US defense budget. Also, when asking this question, Stone joked with Putin by suggesting that the Russians “do it” perhaps due to a lack of graft in Russia versus in the US, but that is hard to believe or stomach….
Oliver Stone is a visionary. His concept of the Vietnam War was spot on. Russia and the US were allied in WW2. Had we not developed the atomic bomb first, Russia would be the world power now. What the two countries have in common is we both lost the Afghanistan War. Likely, we’ll come together again when China invades Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, both countries have the highest prison populations per capital. They’re a ready reserve for ground warfare. It takes a killer to be a killer. I sympathize and respect small countries on the other side of the world. They fight capitalism and socialism to preserve their religion and culture. They’ll fight to the last man with bows and arrows against nukes. What pleases me for the moment is immigrants in this country. They’re life goal is citizenship. They work without meth breaks. Most important, THEY VOTE and value their freedom and constitutional rights.