Speaker unverified: uncertainty

Transcript context

…What about Vladimir Putin? He’s been in power since 2000. So as the old adage goes, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Do you think he has been corrupted by being in power for so long, if you think of the man, if you look at his mind? Listen, I don’t know exactly. I can’t say because I don’t know enough about him or about… The evidence that I’ve seen is that he is homicidal. He kills his enemies or poisons them. And the reaction I’ve seen to that, to hit those accusations from him have not been to deny that but to kind of laugh it off. Oh, I think he’s a dangerous man and that, of course, there’s probably corruption in his regime. But having said that, it’s not our business to change the Russian government. And anybody who thinks it’s a good idea to do a regime change in Russia, which has more nuclear weapons than we do, is I think irresponsible. And Vladimir Putin himself has said, “We will not live in a world without Russia.” And it was clear when he said that he was talking about himself. And he has his hand on a button that could bring Armageddon to the entire planet. So why are we messing with this? It’s not our job to change that regime. We should be making friends with the Russians. We shouldn’t be treating him as an enemy. Now we’ve pushed him into the camp with China. That’s not a good thing for our country. And by the way, what we’re doing now does not appear to be weakening Putin at all. Putin now, if you believe the polls that are coming out of Russia, they show him… the most recent polls that I’ve seen show him with an 89% popularity that people in Russia support the war in Ukraine, and they support him as an individual. And I understand there’s problems with polling and you don’t know what to believe, but the polls consistently show that. And it’s not America’s business to be the policemen of the world and to be changing regimes in the world. That’s illegal. We shouldn’t be breaking international laws. We should actually be looking for ways to improve relationships with Russia, not to destroy Russia, not to destroy, and not to choose its leadership for them. That’s up to the Russian people, not us. Step one is to sit down and empathize with the leaders of both nations to understand their history, their concerns, their hopes, just to open the door for conversation so they’re not back to the corner.…

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