Why is this comment noteworthy? He is a smart guy irrespective of whomsoever makes this observation.
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Because Putin's statements are not mere random utterances of 'fun facts'. How many times has Putin said 'Garry Kasparov is a smart guy'? (Kasparov is a former world chess champion, Russian Presidential Candidate, and now works on Renew Democracy Initiative, a pro-democracy NGO, which opposes spread of autocracy). Or, for that matter, the same abt Navalny or any of his other opponents ?
Reductionist thinking is convenient, but far too often misleading.
You would not find worth of self-reflection, if an indicted war criminal would be publicly praising you?
"Elon Musk spoke with Vladimir Putin directly, Pentagon official says" - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/elon-musk-pu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the...
"CC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova" - https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-is...
Not really. Praise is free and regardless how you feel about him, Elon is one of the world's most successful businessmen. He's done things worthy of praise. (He's also done things worthy of scorn.)
Are the reasons for praise problematic? What are they, and why?
Here's a few other quotes by Vlad that contain praise:
> It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system.
He's praising all of America! Worthy of self-reflection?
> History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.
Democracy itself has been praised by a war criminal! What should we do with this knowledge?
Evil doesn't hand out gold stars for attendance. When a war criminal beams a spotlight of praise onto someone, it's not because they're dazzled by their moral compass; it's more like they see a bit of themselves, or rather, something exploitable that aligns with their nefarious schemes. It’s the dark mirror of endorsement—'I like how you think; it reminds me of, well, me.'
It's not about falling for a logical fallacy; it's about recognizing the dance floor where these accolades are given. Evil's endorsements don't come from a place of benign admiration but a strategic calculation of how such qualities or actions serve their agenda. To ignore the context and implications of such praise is not only ingenuous but dangerously naïve.
No. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
This is the argument from authority fallacy but in reverse. Just because a idiotic war criminal praises someone does not mean that person is bad. Neither is it an indication that person is good. You should not pay attention to idiots. If you always do the opposite of idiots, you're letting idiots control you, and what does that make you?
In the [excellent] interview with Putin, Putin also called many US Presidents quite smart. Are you now also quite dubious of them, because of literally the exact same sort of "praise"? Calling it praise is not even rational - it is an observation. One may call Musk many things, but denying he's both quite intelligent and willful would be absurd.
In what way is the interview excellent?
It was not like an interview with a typical politician, which is perhaps not a surprise, but interesting nonetheless. He was happy to acknowledge when he didn't know things, gave numerous interesting insights in conversations he has had with other world leaders - while actively avoiding betraying their trust of confidence. He also displayed a rather encyclopedic knowledge of history which I found fascinating as a history buff myself. In fact most of the section about Ukraine was largely a lengthy history lesson, including a reasonable overview of how people like Bandera came to be national heroes in Ukraine.
I suppose seeing a world leader who actually seems intelligent and "real" was just something novel. The political personality all Western politicians use now a days is something I find irritating. Giving focus tested answers, or no answers at all, while speaking endlessly nonetheless. Even on topics he clearly found irritating, he didn't try to spin things. E.g. - on the Wallstreet Journal guy, he simply focused on the fact that he broke Russian law, and wanted to trade him for a Russian citizen.
Basically it felt much more like a diplomat speaking to another diplomat instead of a politician trying to give you the answers he thinks you want to hear, regardless of what he actually thinks.
It doesn't sound like an interview at all, at least not a hard hitting interview with tough questions. More like a promotional tour for a new book or something.
I think it highlights differences in American and Russian communication style very well. Even with the softball questions, Carlson kept trying to steer the conversation towards a series of questions and answers and seemed a bit annoyed by the long-winded stories. Putin kept saying he'll answer the question but finish his explanation first.
To an American this kind of communication seems like evasion and filibustering. To a Russian not getting into the details feels shallow and rash.
Personally, I've struggled mightily with writing in American business style. You know, executive summary front and center, any details relegated to an appendix. A much more natural style for me is storytelling - linear, chronological, with details inline.
Well it wasn't a "trap" interview, if that's what you mean. It also wasn't a "pr tour" type interview of the sort we have repeatedly given Zelensky. I think the thing it reminded me most of was the old school days of interviews with people like Larry King.
Putin has invaded the Ukraine. This "interview" was only a platform for him to explain his propaganda version of his motives, based on his skewed version of history. None of that was questioned. The reality is that he failed to conquer Ukraine in a few days, as he planned initially, and now is in a bloody war where he sacrifices the lives of hundreds of russians per day for his own personal goals. His troops kills and destroys in the Ukraine. His invasion is a huge catastrophe for him, for russia and especially for the ukraine. There is no justification for this and it can't be found in history.
Well, Larry King asked pretty tough questions when he interviewed Putin.
That's a very strange, view given that the history was mostly wrong. Putin is not a typical politician, he is an ex- intelligence service ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin#KGB_career ) guy who got to power and made Russia his own authoritarian ruled country.
Not to contradict you, but he did also say a few quite annoyingly incorrect things, like claiming it was the fault of Poland that they were invaded by Hitler.
Also the point where Tucker reached the conclusion that "only an idiot would believe that Russia is an expansionist power" sounds a lot like slurping sounds around Putin's private parts to me(Russia has invaded at least 3 neighbouring countries in the last decade)
The Hitler/Poland observation especially makes me think perhaps Putin would like to call it the Second World Special Military Operation, which isn't all that far from calling the Ukraine war by any other name than a war.
Tucker said nothing of the sort, nor did Putin claim it was Poland's fault they were invaded. Putin did, however, explain what Hitler's motivation was, The Free City of Danzig. [1] It was an area primarily populated with German peoples but 'granted' to Poland after WW1. Germany wanted it back, Poland refused, and eventually Germany ended up invading to get it back. This doesn't mean Germany's actions were right, nor Poland's wrong. It simply is what it is, and is obviously an extremely important part of history.
There's a transcript of the interview here [2]. It looks like an auto-translated version of the Russian transcript, and a rather terrible one at that. So I would take it with a grain of salt, but it should at least be a decent way of finding whichever topic you're interested in and correlating that against its location in the actual interview.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_of_Danzig
[2] - https://voxday.net/2024/02/09/tucker-putin-interview-complet...
Putin lied about the motivation of Germany and failed to mention, that the Soviet Union itself invaded parts of Poland. Hitler's motivation was to conquer and enslave East Europe. Getting Danzig back was not the motivation. It was only a stepping stone. The Soviet Union itself worked together with Nazi Germany and attacked & invaded Poland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact Putin should be convicted for war crimes. We learned nothing new from Putin, this stuff was all already explained by him. The right-wing "interviewer" from the US acted like a tool.
> Putin did, however, explain what Hitler's motivation was, The Free City of Danzig.
That was an excuse, not motivation. Hitler was motivated by theories of racial superiority, which he immediately began carrying out in Poland after invading the country and dividing it with the USSR, which had attacked Poland from the east in a supporting action (they even held a joint victory parade). Hitler sought to exterminate all Jews and most Poles living in Poland and turn the few remaining Poles into a slave race serving German settlers, who were given Polish farms and businesses. Hitler managed to murder roughly 3 million Polish Jews and 3 million Poles before finding a sorry end in a petrol-filled ditch somewhere in Berlin. Systemic extermination of people living in Poland had been planned for years in advance and started right on the first days of the invasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion
Russian theories of superiority, exceptionalism and Russki mir are eerily similar to the German ideas of superiority and Lebensraum in both theory and practice:
Operation Tannenberg (German: Unternehmen Tannenberg) was a codename for one of the anti-Polish extermination actions by Nazi Germany. The shootings were conducted with the use of a proscription list (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen) targeting Poland’s elite, compiled by the Gestapo in the two years before the invasion of Poland. The secret lists identified more than 61,000 members of the Polish elite: activists, intelligentsia, scholars, clergy, actors, former officers and others, who were to be interned or shot. Members of the German minority living in Poland assisted in preparing the lists.
USSR did the same in the parts of Poland they invaded:
The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. /---/ The order to execute captive members of the Polish officer corps was secretly issued by the Soviet Politburo led by Joseph Stalin. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the remaining 8,000 were Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents and gendarmes, spies and saboteurs, former landowners, factory owners and officials".
And the same thing is going on in occupied parts of Ukraine right now:
In a deliberate, widespread campaign, Russian forces systematically targeted influential Ukrainians, nationally and locally, to neutralize resistance through detention, torture and executions, an Associated Press investigation has found. The strategy appears to violate the laws of war and could help build a case for genocide. Russian troops hunted Ukrainians by name, using lists prepared with the help of their intelligence services. In the crosshairs were government officials, journalists, activists, veterans, religious leaders and lawyers. /---/ The pattern was similar across the country, according to testimonies AP collected from occupied and formerly occupied territories around Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv and Donetsk regions.
But it did not say it only in the interview.It seems Putin the KGB man, can't stop praising Musk. For example back in Sep: "Russia’s Putin praises Elon Musk as an ‘outstanding person’ and ‘talented businessman’" - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/12/russias-vladimir-putin-prais...