Vladimir Putin Megyn Kelly Interview Election

Lilian Min
Updated
Photo credit: Mikhail Metzel / Getty
Photo credit: Mikhail Metzel / Getty

From Cosmopolitan

  • On Sunday night, Megyn Kelly interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin on her new NBC show Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly

  • Kelly asked Putin about possible Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election, which has brought both federal investigators and White House officials under scrutiny

  • Putin instead suggested that perhaps U.S. intelligence agencies were the ones behind pre-election hacking campaigns, and were now blaming the Russian government

  • "You have created a sensation out of nothing. And out of this sensation you created a weapon of war against the president. You people over there ... good job. Your lives must be boring."

  • Putin had previously suggested that "patriotic hackers" could've attacked the U.S., but outside of Russian state influence

On Sunday, Megyn Kelly debuted her new NBC show Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly with an interview of Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the course of their conversation, Kelly covered the current U.S. justice department's investigation into Russian influence on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In a preview clip of their interview, Putin dismisses the allegations that the Russian government employed hackers to leak information during the campaign, most notably of emails within the Democratic party leadership, including those of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

"Hackers can be anywhere. They can be in Russia, in Asia, even in America, Latin America. There can even be hackers, by the way, in the United States. Very skillfully and professionally shifted the blame, as we say, onto Russia ... It was convenient for them to release this information, so they released it, citing Russia. Could you imagine something like that? I can."

He then shifted the conversation to Kelly and the larger media's role in publicizing the U.S. investigation:

"You have created a sensation out of nothing. And out of this sensation you created a weapon of war against the president. You people over there … good job. Your lives must be boring."

He also pushed back against the notion that he had a file of information about U.S. President Trump:

"Well this just another load of nonsense. Where would we get this information from? There was a time when he used to come to Moscow but, you know, I never met him ... Have you all lost your sense over there?"

Additionally, he dodged questions about his interactions with former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn:

"When I came to the event [in 2015] for our company, Russia Today, and sat down at the table, next to me there was a gentleman sitting on one side ... I made my speech. Then we talked about some other stuff. And I got up and left. And then afterwards I was told, ‘You know there was an American gentleman. He was involved in some things. He used to be in the security services’ … that’s it. I didn’t even really talk to him… That’s the extent of my acquaintance with Mr. Flynn."

Before taping the interview on Friday, Kelly had moderated a panel at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, to which Putin also contributed.

Photo credit: @nbcnews / Twitter
Photo credit: @nbcnews / Twitter

Kelly's new show features an interview with sports journalist Erin Andrews.

Follow Lilian on Twitter.

You Might Also Like