Compare NBC's expurgated, baldly war-like version of its Putin interview
with the *unedited *
transcript released by the Kremlin:
NBC's version ("Confronting Putin"):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1pPkAOZI50
Kremlin transcript:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57027
Aside from helping Putin sail to victory in Russia's upcoming election, all
NBC did here was
reconfirm that "our free press" is nothing but a mammoth PA system for the
US war machine.
MCM
NBC’s Clueless Boost for Putin
*by Ray McGovern*
March 12, 2018
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/03/12/nbcs-clueless-boost-for-putin/
With the Russian president in the heat of a re-election campaign, Putin sat
down to talk with NBC’s Megyn Kelly for an interview that enabled him to
burnish his credentials to the Russian electorate, Ray McGovern explains.
*By Ray McGovern*
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s team swept a doubleheader on March 1,
with his mid-day speech claiming strategic parity with the U.S., and then
the nightcap duel with NBC’s Megyn Kelly. Any lingering doubt that Putin is
a shoo-in for another term as President is now dispelled. Putin might
consider sending NBC a thank-you note.
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/megyn-kelly-putin.jpg>
Megyn Kelly interviews Vladimir Putin on March 1, 2018.
As I watched NBC’s special, “Confronting Putin
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-u-s-election-interference-i-couldn-t-care-less-n855151>
,” Friday evening, I asked myself — naively — what possessed President
Putin to subject himself again to what NBC calls a Megan Kelly “grilling,”
replete with supercilious questions and less-than-polite interruptions,
just nine months after his first such “grilling.” It then hit me that
“grilling” is in the eye of the beholder.
Reviewing the original Russian tape of the interviews, it became clear that
the tête-à-tête showed a Putin looking patiently but supremely presidential
to Russian viewers who could see the whole interviews, not just the
selective selected excerpts aired by NBC and “interpreted” by
Russophobe-de-jour Richard Haas. (A close adviser to Secretary of State
Colin Powell, Haas was among those who told him it was a swell idea to
invade Iraq. When the anticipated “cakewalk” turned rather bloody, with no
WMD to be found, Haas quit in July 2003 and became President of the Council
on Foreign Relations where he is now well into his 15th year.)
Back to the Kelly-Putin pas de deux: At the March 1 interview the Russian
President came out swinging. When Kelly asked the first time whether there
is “a new arms race right now” after Putin’s announcement of Russia’s new
strategic weapons, Putin reminded her that it was the U.S. that withdrew in
2002 from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. He added that he had
repeatedly warned the Bush/Cheney administration that Russia would be
forced to respond to the dangerous upset of the strategic equilibrium.
For some reason best known to Kelly and NBC, Kelly tried repeatedly to make
the case that the U.S. decision to scrap the ABM treaty was a result of the
terrorist attacks of 9/11, when, she said, “the United States was
reassessing its security posture.”
“Complete nonsense,” was Putin’s reply (“polniy chush” in Russian — chush
ringing with onomatopoeia and a polite rendering of “B.S.”). Putin
explained that “9/11 and the missile defense system are completely
unrelated,” adding that even “housewives” are able to understand that. He
found occasion to use “polniy chush” (or simply “chush) several times
during the interview.
*snip>*
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