Fox Host Asks Putin the Questions Trump Didn't

With President Trump apparently unable or unwilling to ask Vladimir Putin tough questions, US interests were represented in Helsinki by ... Chris Wallace? The Fox host's interview with the Russian leader, which aired Monday night, was a testy affair, with Putin clearly unhappy about a journalist challenging him, the Washington Post reports. Putin denied having compromising material on Trump and said it was "utterly ridiculous" to suggest Moscow interfered in the 2016 election. "Do you really believe that someone acting from the Russian territory could have influenced the United States and influenced the choice of millions of Americans?" he asked.

In one of the most tense Putin-Wallace exchanges, the American asked the Russian why so many of his critics end up dead. Putin said his political rivals don't "always" end up dead before pointing out that American presidents and Martin Luther King Jr. among others, have been assassinated on American soil. "And what happens to the clashes between police and, well, civil society, and some—several ethnic groups?" he asked. "Well, that’s something that happens on the US soil. All of us have our own set of domestic problems." At other points, Putin said that there would be an "extremely negative" reaction if Ukraine or Georgia joined NATO—and told Wallace that he had been "deceived" and didn't know the "real situation" in Syria. (More Vladimir Putin stories.)