Here is a transcript of the excerpt:
Chris Wallace: I think it's fair to say that you are most controversial these days for a series of interviews that you did with Vladimir Putin, over a couple of years in the mid 2010s, in which you've been criticized for being too friendly, and even fawning. Why didn't you challenge Putin more in those interviews?
Oliver Stone: I'm sorry, Chris, that is absolute bullshit. Look at the fourth hour, for example, this is in the fourth hour and constantly I'm pushing him in this, in this interview as ...
Chris Wallace: But when he makes a contention, do you challenge him?
Oliver Stone: Sometimes you have to play the game of getting an interview. You understand? If you look at ...
Chris Wallace: I understand. When you get to sit down with a dictator, why would you want to tiptoe around the fact that he has been accused of killing his political opponents?
Oliver Stone: He's been accused. Okay, I've never seen hard evidence of that.
Chris Wallace: Are you really sitting here, Oliver, saying that you think that Putin has been unjustly accused of attacking or killing his political opponents?
Oliver Stone: Again, I have to ask you, what's the motive to do this?
Chris Wallace: Because he's a dictator and he doesn't like people who were a threat.
Oliver Stone: That's a little simplistic.
Chris Wallace: You said this summer that Putin, this is your quote, is not the monster that he has been portrayed by American propaganda. Really?
Oliver Stone: You know, you're going about this all wrong. You're not even looking, giving the guy a break. You're not understanding his point of view.
Chris Wallace: I'm not giving who a break?
Oliver Stone: I'm talking about Putin. You're blaming him for ... what's he doing? To the Russian people ... think about it ...
Chris Wallace: Oliver, the question that I would ask you is why are you giving ...
Oliver Stone: I'm trying to see it from both sides.
Chris Wallace: ... Putin such a break? Why are you siding with Vladimir Putin?
Oliver Stone: I'm not siding with anybody.
Even the Toronto Star was horrified by Stone's comments: (with Canadian spelling)
That doc was like watching Genghis Khan get interviewed by Elmo.
Yes. Score another one for Occam’s razor. Poor Chris Wallace looked exasperated, like he was trying to teach algebra to a goldfish. Does Mr. Stone really believe Mr. Putin is a standup guy who hums “Kumbaya” while cuddling stray kittens?
Did Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private jet just fall out of the sky in August, two months after his Wagner Group marched toward Moscow in a ceremonial coup? Did Pavel Antov accidentally fall out of a hotel window? Did Alexander Litvinenko ask for his London tea to be flavoured with Polonium-210? And what does Stone make of Alexei Navalny?
Look, there is no hard evidence he did not want to be poisoned and imprisoned.
You can understand why someone like Steven Seagal is a Putin fanboy. He can’t think straight after taking so many karate chops to the head. Plus, Moscow has great prices on muumuus and moustache dye. But other celebrities who once cozied up to Putin — Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Paul McCartney, Gérard Depardieu — did an about-face and condemned Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine, a death-a-palooza of hourly war crimes and unspeakable atrocities targeting civilians.
But, sure, Oliver, keep telling us about how Putin is “misunderstood.”
It has been beyond depressing over the last 579 days to watch and hear a sliver of strident Westerners muddy the waters on the firehose of suffering in Ukraine. They’d have you believe this is a “proxy war” the United States orchestrated while enslaved to the military-industrial complex. They claim Putin was forced into invading after years of creeping NATO expansionism. Huh? Unhinged conservatives like Tucker Carlson have smeared Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and openly cheered for Russia.
The only good news is that, since getting whacked by Fox News, Tucker now operates out of a garden shed. He once had staff who could put a spit-shine on his crazy. Now there are no shocking chyrons and production values. All that’s left is the crazy.
Oliver Stone and other so-called heterodox luminaries such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are hard-wired to blame America first. This is what happens when you soak your brain in conspiratorial bleach for decades. Reality gets whitewashed. Anyone who believes Joe Biden wanted to spend billions to help Ukraine defend itself while America’s credit card is maxed out and it can’t make monthly payments is not to be taken seriously.
NATO is helping Ukraine because if Putin is not stopped there, his imperial delusions will multiply like cockroaches. He will keep crossing borders until NATO troops, including Canadians, are forced into combat. Then, yeah, cue World War III.
Ukraine deserves a world that is unflinching in its demand for peace, security, territorial sovereignty and international order. Instead, Ukraine is fighting for its existence as cultural influencers such as Oliver Stone lack the moral courage to call Putin a threat to humanity. The war in Ukraine is not about geopolitics or American hegemony. It’s about the sociopathology of one despicable man.
But when Wallace asked Stone why he was giving Putin a break, the director stammered about “both sides.” Roger Waters and Russell Brand make the same argument. These people are insane. There are no “both sides” on this one.
There is only one side: Russia invaded Ukraine.
If only Stone cared about Ukrainians as much as he cares about William Blum or nuclear power. He might be moved to tears by the carnage of cruise missiles obliterating hospitals, schools, apartment buildings. He might wonder why he is lionized as a folk hero on Russian state TV. You know, like Tucker Carlson.
Oliver Stone loves conspiracies. He believes everyone else is missing the real story.
He should make a biopic about how he got duped by Vladimir Putin.
Previous Blog Posts on Oliver Stone's Politics
Relevant Links on Oliver Stone's Politics
Don't miss the Viewer's Guide to JFK: Destiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass.
Over the past several months, I have shown in multiple blog posts how Oliver Stone's documentary series, JFK Revisited and JFK: Destiny Betrayed, misleads viewers. In fact, despite months of work, there are still many more misleading segments that need to be addressed. It's no wonder that the fact checkers of Netflix nixed the airing of the films.
There is a choice between four hours of tendentious nonsense (JFK: Destiny Betrayed) and two hours (JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass). As a handy guide for viewers, here are all those posts in order of their appearance in JFK: Destiny Betrayed and JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, preceded by some general critiques.
The Viewer's Guide has now been updated to include the sources from my new book, Oliver Stone's Film-Flam: The Demagogue of Dealey Plaza.
