There is no getting the truth out of Vladimir Putin. That’s just how it goes with bald-faced liars, and Putin has shown time and again that he deceives as smoothly and easily as he inhales and exhales.
American viewers watched this play out before in his highly publicized tête-à-têtes with NBC’s Megyn Kelly, first in 2017 and again this year following the Justice Department’s indictment of 13 Russian citizens and three companies in February. When Kelly confronts Putin with this new information in a special interview that aired in March, the Russian president snickers and rolls his eyes.
“They’re not government officials,” he shoots back at Kelly. “So what if they’re Russians? There are 146 million Russians. So what?”
Kelly presses him nevertheless: Thirteen Russian nationals plus three Russian companies interfered in our elections, she repeats. “Is that OK with you?”
“I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. Because. . . they do not represent the government. I could not care less. They do not represent the interests of the Russian state.”
Maybe they’re not even Russians, Putin continues, citing a ridiculous list of alternative suspects. “How do you know? I don’t know.”
Putin detests journalists, and has the trail of dead ones linked to him to prove it. Televised interviews, however, have their use. They’re stages he uses to polish his image as a strong leader, and he knows how to steer them. Journalists like Kelly can do their best to play the part of the hard-hitting interviewer, but to Putin’s loyalists — including some Americans — they’re image-boosting stagecraft.
But, as is the way of good theater, an observer can glean a lot more about subjects like Putin by observing what he does as opposed to what he says. And here is where Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace played a strong hand in Monday’s exclusive interview with Putin, conducted at the Helsinki summit with Donald Trump.
Fox News Channel publicized Wallace’s interview with Putin days prior to its airing — a lovely bookend to the predictable post-game locker room love fest between Trump and Sean Hannity that aired afterward in primetime. Owing to the American president’s special relationship with Fox, Putin likely sees it as akin to Channel One or Russia-1, America’s version of state-run TV. Putin, having already deflected the best efforts of Fox's former employee Kelly twice, may have expected a relatively smooth run.
Wallace’s hard turn, therefore, might have come as a bit of a surprise to the former KGB officer.
Not long into an interview that began quite cordially — with Wallace allowing Putin to speak uninterrupted for several minutes to answer his innocuous first question — Wallace picks up a document in his lap. As he does this, he indicates through a translator that it is a copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian officials — agents of the Russian state.
Wallace’s interview lasted for nearly 34 minutes, which Fox aired in its entirety. At first, it seemed like this would not go the way the network might have intended it, since Wallace allowed Putin to deliver a nearly four minute answer to his very first question.
“I have 12 names here,” Wallace says. “It talks about specific members of the GRU [the main intelligence agency of the Russian government].”
A tight shot on Putin’s face catches the moment the translation hits him, as Wallace is speaking. Then comes the same grin and snicker he used to dismiss Kelly.
“You smile,” Wallace says. “Let me finish. They say that these units were specifically involved into hacking into Democratic party computers, stealing information and spreading it to the world to try to disrupt the American election.”
Then comes the theatrical coup: Wallace leans in and presents the papers to Putin who suddenly drops his assured and powerful grin. “May I give this to you to look at, sir?”
For half a moment, Putin looks thrown off, maybe even disgusted. Composing himself and uttering something that isn’t translated, he quickly gestures with his wrist, instructing Wallace to place the papers on a nearby table.
It’s a tiny moment, but this small act of interrupting Putin’s stage act with blocking off of a different script changed the tone of everything that came afterward. Somehow this joust took on a new meaning, making Putin a little more brazen in his mockery of Mueller’s accusations. Even as he continued to deny sanctioning Russian efforts to interfere and manipulate the 2016 presidential elections, he also characterized the Democratic National Committee’s hacking as something akin to a great favor to the American people.
Referring to the leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and other stolen and strategically released information, Putin said, “Was it some rigging of facts? Was it some forgery of facts? That’s the important point that I’m trying to make. Was it any false information planted? No it wasn’t.”
Putin is naturally quite aware of the audience he’s speaking to; the most recent polling data from Pew Research Center indicates that a quarter of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have a favorable view of the Russian leader.
Wallace, on the other hand, may have been determined to differentiate himself from his Fox News colleagues and Trump propagandists; I cannot say for sure. Certainly he reminded us that he’s a journalist, actually pushing Putin hard on Russia’s actions in Syria, citing estimates that 20,000 children have been killed by Bashar al-Assad's regime and the Russian troops supporting it.
“You are completely deceived and I’m very sorry that you don’t know the real story about the story in Syria,” a testy Putin replied.
He was similarly contentious when Wallace asked whether he and Trump discussed the annexation of Crimea, reframing it as a democratic decision by the people to become part of Russia as opposed to the result of a military invasion in 2014.
Wallace also brought up the video released by the Russian government boasting of its nuclear capability, including a graphic animation of a missile appearing to strike a location near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Putin’s response was to deny that the location in the video was Florida. “Take a more careful look at it. There was never a caption [that reads] ‘Florida,’” he tells Wallace, who is not having it. “. . . Don’t try to scare your population with make-believe threats. I’m pretty sure I can give you as a present this footage.” No need — the world already has it.
And Wallace didn’t let up even as the interview neared its close, when he asked Putin why a number of his critics have been mysteriously poisoned, attacked or killed outright. And here’s where Putin’s parrying and obfuscation took on some fascinating twists and twirls.
Reacting to Wallace’s mention of Sergei Skripal, who was poisoned along with his daughter by a nerve agent while out in public in Britain, Putin attempted to sidestep the issue by saying, “All of us have plenty of political rivals. I'm pretty sure President Trump has plenty of political rivals.”
“But they don't end up dead,” Wallace replies, leading to a whirlwind of spin from Putin: “Haven't presidents been killed in the United States?. . Has Kennedy been killed in Russia or in the United States? Or Mr. King?” Putin then goes on to liken the string of dead Russian dissidents to the clashes between our police and “several ethnic groups.”
“All of us have our own set of domestic problems,” Putin adds, blaming the mysterious deaths of the people he considers to be enemies as side effects of a maturing statehood. “And we prosecute people responsible for these crimes.” Or they would, he adds, if only someone would present him with proof of what happened.
Granted, it’s not exactly tough to look like Walter Cronkite when one’s colleagues consist of Tucker Carlson and Hannity. Not long after Wallace’s interview, the former opined that Mexico is interfering in American elections more than Russia by packing our electorate, while the latter assured his viewers that every major country in the world engages in election interference — but only after reiterating that like everything else that’s gone wrong, this is former president Obama’s fault.
Wallace, in contrast, did his job as a journalist, resisting the “Russia is our friend” narrative that Carlson, Hannity and Trump himself perpetuate.
In an exchange with Fox News’ overly effusive Bret Baier following the interview, Wallace points out that two things became apparent during his conversation with Putin. One, he says, was a deep sense of grievance as to how he’s portrayed. The second was his eagerness to do business.
“He very much wants to turn the page,” Wallace observes. Good on him for not allowing Putin to influence his script. By maintaining control of the stage, Wallace did his best to hold Putin accountable for trespasses against our democracy that our own president refused to acknowledge as the world was watching. On this day of all days, this example mattered.
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