Which meant he was perfectly trained to move to MSNBC to accept incoming news, trim off any meaningful information, and sit in an office spinning propaganda, lies, and half-truths for ‘morale’.

There’s a line between asking hard questions and letting someone speak, and being their inquisitor or browbeating them.

I am less bothered by it. I grew up watching Tim Sebastian on BBC’s HARDTalk, back in the day, and his interviewing style was MUCH more confrontational than anything Graham Phillips did. I thought that he did resort to prompting his interviewee a bit at various points, but I know that this is what British interviewers are like, in general.

There’s a line between asking hard questions and letting someone speak, and being their inquisitor or browbeating them. Phillips crossed it more than once, and spent a good deal of time leading the subject to follow the designated script. I like it no better here than I do in other contexts. Worse, actually, given the man’s position of helplessness. If you want to interrogate prisoners, put on a uniform that you’re entitled to wear and practice that specialty legitimately.

Now, Aiden agreed to the interview. He’s lucky to be alive, since he could by all rights just be executed as an unlawful combatant, and the Russians moreover said they would do so. I don’t know if I’d consider the interview entirely voluntary, but this is part and parcel of owning your own choices. He’s in a very difficult situation, and is playing such cards as he has.

Reasonable evidence does point to the Ukrainians not being the good guys here, and the interview is a source of information. But there’s a fair bit that I dislike about it.