The Q&Q For 2/16/24

This week’s quote comes to us from none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin, who when asked who he’d like to see win the November election said:

“Biden, he’s more experienced, more predictable, he’s a politician of the old formation,” 

1. When the White House learned of Putin’s comments their reaction was:

A) To send out a fundraising email touting the apparent endorsement from “my good friend Vladimir. Nostrovia!”

B) To prepare the way for replacing Kamala Harris with Putin on the ticket.

C) To say that, “Mr. Putin should just stay out of our elections.”

D) To contact Putin’s people to see if he would host a Kremlin fundraiser.

2. When asked about the comments from Russia’s leader, Biden said:

A) “Leonid Brezhnev and I have nothing in common.”

B) “I welcome the support of my good friend, Mikhail Gorbachev.”

C) “When it comes to Khrushchev, trust but verify.”

D) “I thought the czar was dead.”

3. What’s Putin up to?

A) He doesn’t want Trump to win because he fears he’ll be eclipsed as the world’s most high-profile authoritarian.

B) He just can’t take another meeting with Trump, that fawning idiot suck up.

C) He wants Trump so he’ll say Biden. (He used to run the KGB.)

D) He honestly thinks Biden is a more stable, predictable adversary.

4. Putin’s leading political adversary in Russia, Aleksei A. Navalny, died in prison yesterday. The most likely explanation is that:

A) He died of natural causes at age 47.

B) It was long-haul COVID.

C) Too much vodka.

D) Putin had him killed.

5. Other example’s of Navalny’s fate include:

A) April 17, 2003: Sergei Yushenkov, a veteran politician and leader of the anti-Kremlin party Liberal Russia, is shot in front of his Moscow home.

B) October 7, 2006: One of Russia’s most prominent journalists and a persistent chronicler of rights abuses in Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya is shot dead in her apartment building, in an execution-style killing.

C) November 23, 2006: The former Russian security agent Aleksandr Litvinenko dies in London after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. Litvinenko had fled to Britain in 2000 after accusing the FSB of plotting to kill oligarch Boris Berezovsky. He later co-authored a book blaming the agency for the 1999 apartment-building bombings.

D) July 16, 2009: The body of the renowned human rights activist Natalya Estemirova, with bullet wounds to her head and chest, is found in Ingushetia, hours after her abduction near her home in the capital of Chechnya, Grozny.

E) November 16, 2009: The whistle-blowing lawyer who had implicated Russian officials in an alleged $230 million tax fraud dies one year after being jailed on similar charges. Sergei Magnitsky suffered from pancreatitis and was denied medical care in pretrial detention, conditions rights activists said were tantamount to torture. According to the Kremlin’s own human rights council, he was badly beaten before his death.

F) February 27, 2015: The reformist former regional governor and deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov who was a rising political star in the 1990s but became one of Putin’s most vocal opponents is shot dead in a gangland-style killing on a bridge near the Kremlin, at age 55.

6. Of Putin, Trump has said:

A) “Look at Putin – what he’s doing with Russia – I mean, you know, what’s going on over there. I mean this guy has done – whether you like him or don’t like him – he’s doing a great job in rebuilding the image of Russia and also rebuilding Russia period.”

B) “I think the biggest thing we have is that we were on ’60 Minutes’ together and we had fantastic ratings. One of your best-rated shows in a long time. So that was good, right? So we were stable mates.”

C) “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.”

D) “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country, I think our country does plenty of killing also.”

Answers

1: C

2: He could say any of them.

3: All are possible, though D is the most unlikely.

4: D

5: Sadly, all are correct. Putin had them all assassinated.

6: Trump has said all those things.

Kind of a somber way to close out the week, so we’ll just leave it there. See you Monday. Have a nice weekend.