At his post-summit press conference in Geneva after he had met with President Joe Biden on Wednesday, Russian leader Vladimir Putin stopped sounding like the president of his nation and more like many member of the Republican Party.
Asked by a reporter about his attempts to destroy dissenting opinions in his country, Putin immediately referenced the January 6 Capitol insurrection:
“On the question of who is murdering whom, people rioted and went into the Congress in the U.S. with political demands. Many countries are going through exactly what we’re going through. Let me just repeat. We sympathize with what was happening in the states, but we do not wish that to happen in Russia.”
Close your eyes and you could almost hear congressional Republicans saying the very same thing by trying to minimize what took place earlier this year. It’s almost as if Putin and the GOP are using the same talking points.
And that’s exactly what it sounded like to former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi, who told MSNBC host Ari Melber:
“I can’t, from the national security perspective, can’t let the opportunity go to not point out that, as recently as today, Vladimir Putin at his press conference regurgitated the very same message that we have U.S. Congressmen saying, which is that the people that breached the security at the Capitol were simply looking for their political voice. They were simply looking for some political solutions. Vladimir Putin said that today at his press conference and these members of congress who refuse to honor the bravery of the Capitol police officers, who protected those members of congress are echoing the same thing as Putin.”
The words from Putin are also eerily reminiscent of what is being preached night and day on Fox News, Newsmax, and One America News: That the rioters were the good guys who had a legitimate reason to storm the seat of government on the very day Congress was convened to declare Joe Biden the 46th President of the United States.
For example, on Tuesday evening, Fox host Tucker Carlson suggested that the Capitol riots had been organized by the FBI as a way to quash the pro-Trump movement in the United States.
So what, you may ask, is the difference between the Kremlin and the GOP? Well, one is working to destroy the United States from afar while the other does it right here at home while falsely claiming they’re interested in democracy.
