Kremlin propagandists lament looming indictments of 'our Donald Fredovych Trump': report
President Vladimir Putin was furious upon learning that the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague, had issued an arrest warrant for him based on "war crimes" against Ukraine. Putin angrily declared that he doesn't recognize the ICC's authority or consider them legitimate.
Putin's propagandists have rushed to his defense. And some of them are also raging over reports that "our Donald Fredovych Trump" is facing a possible criminal indictment in the United States. "Donald Fredovych Trump" is an affectionate nickname that Putin allies in Russia have for former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Reporting for the Daily Beast on March 20, journalist Julia Davis noted that Margarita Simonyan — who heads the Russian news outlet RT — "responded to the ICC announcement by implying that any country that arrests Putin would face nuclear destruction, even though this would technically mean that 'the boss,' as Simonyan calls him, would go up in flames along with the offending country."
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Duma Deputy Chair Irina Yarovaya, according to Davis, "said that the decision taken by the ICC constitutes an act of international terrorism directed against Russia and proposed introducing new legislation that would classify 'Russophobia' as a dangerous crime." And Davis reports that Russia Investigative Committee leader Alexander Bastrykin "proposed that Moscow creates its own 'international court' — the same idea multiple propagandists have been test-driving on state TV."
Meanwhile, Russian author Kirill Benediktov, who wrote the Russian-language Trump biography "Black Swan," is lamenting Trump's legal problems in the U.S. along with ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin. So is Simonyan, who said she wishes Trump the best.
Benediktov told Russian radio host Sergey Mardan, "It's possible that our Donald Fredovych Trump might end up in the slammer for the same kind of a crime for which people used to get released without a bond. Of course, it's shocking. And Benediktov noted a March 18 tweet by Twitter owner Elon Musk, who predicted that if Trump is criminally indicted, he "will be reelected in a landslide victory."
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Read the Daily Beast's full report at this link (subscription required).
