'Americans Start to Get Fascinated by Vladimir Putin'

“What I enjoyed most about it was that he [Putin] really trolled the Democrats and his old nemesis Hillary Clinton and basically said that they were whiners and sore losers and sort of made fun of the idea that they were blaming him or Russia for losing the election,” Bausman said.

​He further said that it seems that Putin is hopeful that the relations between Russia and the US will improve under President-elect Donald Trump's administration.

“Putin is this incredible media star. He is super popular all over the world and even now Americans are starting to get fascinated with him. My publication takes very pro-Russian sort of positive view of Putin and our traffic has been just surging since the elections,” the editor said.

​He further spoke about the future of the relations between the US and Russia’s presidents and how both are similar in the sense that both aim to make their own countries great again.

“They do seem to have a lot in common. I can foresee that they might get along extremely well and reach a lot of cooperation,” Bausman told Sputnik.

Coming back to Putin’s annual press conference, the editor said that it was “extremely frank” and “open” session and much longer than the US conferences held by Barack Obama.

​Talking about how nothing was off the table during the session and wide range of topics were covered, the editor compared Putin’s session to “evasive” Obama’s sessions.

“Obama’s recent conference went on for two hours and it was just awful. I actually watched it and he went on for half an hour just attacking and criticizing Russia and Putin and going on about this Russia hacking story. It was sort of embarrassing as an American to see my president behave in such an ignorant fashion,” Bausman said.

​President Vladimir Putin covered a wide range of issues during the major year-end press conference, including the state of the Russian economy, the modernization of the country’s military, its defense spending, sanctions, a new arms race, as well as the country's foreign policy. The press conference lasted for nearly four hours.