Russian state television personalities this week were reportedly crestfallen by news of former President Donald Trump's criminal conviction on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The Daily Beast's Julia Davis reports that television personalities in Russia were despondent to see their preferred candidate dealt a guilty verdict, even as they hoped he could still go on to win the 2024 presidential election.
State Duma member Aleksei Zhuravlyov, for one, said that the jury's decision to convict Trump was a poor reflection on Americans' intelligence.
"There are idiots in every country, but this is the only instance where idiots have their own country," he declared. "This is something new in history.”
TV host Dmitry Kulikov, meanwhile, angrily declared that, "They wronged our Donald Trump!" before interviewing political scientist Malek Dudakov, who had been openly rooting for at least a hung jury to get the former president off the hook.
"The miracle did not happen," he lamented. "Our Donald Fredovych was found guilty on all 34 counts... now he is a felon."
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The Russian government has sought to help Trump acquire the presidency since his first election campaign back in 2016.
According to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, Russian operatives were responsible for hacking into former Trump rival Hillary Clinton's campaign's email system and then leaking the contents of those emails to WikiLeaks in the fall of 2016.
Although Mueller did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia, his investigation did find that members of the campaign knew Russia was trying to help him get elected and welcomed their assistance.
Trump himself once infamously said that he "hoped" Russia would find Clinton's "missing" emails from her time serving as secretary of state.