Former chess world champion Garry Kasparov says he thinks Donald Trump is bad for America and the world at large. But for Russia, Kasparov calls the Republican presidential nominee a “perfect counterpart.”
“I think that Trump’s potential victory could threaten not only democracy in this country but democracy worldwide,” Kasparov said Wednesday on CNN’s “New Day.”
Kasparov, a Russian dissident and vociferous critic of Vladimir Putin, said Moscow views Trump as a “perfect agent of chaos.”
“That’s what dictators need,” Kasparov said. “That’s what Putin needs, you know, to destroy the system of global security, and Trump, from what he says and what he does even before he’s elected, is a perfect counterpart.”
The Obama administration said last week it was “confident” the Russian government was behind both the hacks of Democratic groups and the subsequent dissemination of the stolen emails.
Democrats have asserted that the hacks were intended to benefit Trump, a point Hillary Clinton emphasized at the second presidential debate on Sunday night.
“Believe me, they’re not doing it to get me elected,” Clinton said. “They’re doing it to influence the election for Donald Trump.”
That sounds plausible to Kasparov, who called Trump an “ideal person” for Putin to recruit. One of the greatest chess players of all time and a passionate human rights activist, Kasparov has been one of Putin’s most vocal public adversaries.
Kasparov was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in 2007 while en route to an opposition rally, an action that was condemned this week by the European court of human rights.
Kasparov lately has shifted some of his criticism to the US Republican ticket. In September, he ripped Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, for praising Putin’s leadership.
In Trump, Kasparov seems to see the same instincts exhibited by his Russian nemesis. During Sunday’s debate, Kasparov took to Twitter to imagine Trump’s first day in office, saying crackdowns on media and the jailing of political opponents “was also Putin’s checklist.”