Punk Duo ‘Pussy Riot’ Talks Trump: ‘We Laughed When Putin Rose To Power, Too’
Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump has courted controversy once again with his remarks in support of controversial Russian President Vladimir Putin. As Inquisitr reported earlier, Donald Trump has stated Putin’s support was a “great honor,” and the real estate billionaire hopes to work closely with the Russian president if he’s elected.
While Trump’s numbers in the Republican primary continue to impress, his campaign has been the butt of jokes from within the Republican party and beyond. Trump’s prospects in the general election remain grim according to statistics blog FiveThirtyEight, who estimate that Trump’s campaign would have a rough time a general election — in part because of his fiery and often polarizing rhetoric.
Even so, Russian punk group Pussy Riot cautioned American voters today, speaking with the Huffington Post.
“When Putin came to his first term or second term, nobody [in Russia] actually thought that this is serious. Everybody was joking about it and nobody could imagine that after five, six years we would have a war in Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, and these problems in Syria,” said Maria Alekhina, also known as Masha, of Pussy Riot.
Alekhina was one of two members of Pussy Riot who were arrested and jailed in 2012 for protesting the growing political influence of Russia’s Orthodox Church, which has been one of Putin’s biggest supporters. That support has led to some of the more controversial moves of Putin’s presidency, including the anti-gay laws passed in 2013, which severely curtail the civil liberties of LGBT citizens of the Russian Federation, as Mic has reported.
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“Everybody [is] joking about Donald Trump now, but it’s a very short way from joke to sad reality when you have a really crazy president speaking about breaking every moral and logical norm,” Alekhina continued in her interview with Huffington Post. “If you want your country to have your own Putin, you can vote for Donald Trump.”
Alekhina continued to warn about the potential danger that Trump could pose to the U.S., warning the media about paying such close attention to the flamboyant presidential candidate.
“You have to seriously think about giving a microphone and opportunity of public speaking to persons like Donald Trump, because we have so many serious problems and to follow and comment on every word of this man is not really the best idea,” Alekhina said.
There are certainly parallels between the two men, comments Masha Gessen, a Russian-American journalist and author. She believes that Putin isn’t just trying to stir up controversy, but that he genuinely respects Trump and that his comments calling Trump a “bright and talented person” come from a place of respect.
“There’s a really aggressive posture to both men. Putin respects fighters and he respects aggression and he doesn’t respect sort of calm and deliberation. He wants a manly adversary, he wants somebody he can understand,” Gessen told CNN.
The relationship between the two men has certainly warmed up in the last week, with Trump responding kindly to Putin’s praise, even defending the Russian president against allegations that he was responsible for the deaths of journalists in Russia.
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“There are many allegations that he was behind the killing of Anna Politkovskaya,” said George Stephanopoulos in an interview with Donald Trump.
“You’re saying he’s killed people, I haven’t seen that, I don’t know that he has. Have you been able to prove that?” Trump replied.
In a report from the International Federation of Journalists, an estimated 300 journalists have been murdered in Russia since 1993, a shocking number of which haven’t been investigated or prosecuted by local authorities.
“Those who ordered the killings and arranged for the hiring of assassins and their payment have hardly ever been charged, let alone prosecuted,” the IFJ noted in its 2009 report.
[Photo by Getty Images]
