Something you’ve probably picked up on during the 87 years that Donald Trump has been president is that the ex–real-estate developer has a thing for despots in general, and for one special despot in particular. Rarely a day goes by that the president doesn’t trash allies like Germany and Canada for supposedly not paying their bills, selling too many cars in the U.S., or politely nodding as he lies to their faces. But when it comes to a certain someone whose name rhymes with Shladimir Shmutin, a man who barely bothers to conceal the fact that he meddled in the 2016 election, and will probably do the same in 2018, the 45th president of the United States is full of mortifying praise. So when he found out that U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley had announced preliminary plans to impose economic sanctions on Russia for supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime, he freaked out like a guy worried about a tape thing that definitely doesn’t exist but which he thinks the F.B.I. should investigate anyway, just to be safe. In putting the kibosh on the sanctions, Trump administration officials reportedly said he wouldn’t approve any additional measures without “another triggering event by Russia,” a turn of events that led many to conclude that, for some reason, Putin can do anything he wants, and his little American babushka doll won’t make a peep. On Tuesday, however, our new National Economic Council director took to the airwaves to put forth another explanation: the U.N. ambassador has no idea what she’s talking about.

Chatting to Trump’s buddies at Fox and Friends, Larry Kudlow told the gang that the whole thing was just a miscommunication owing to “momentary confusion” on Nikki Haley’s part, which sounds a lot like he’s suggesting the U.N. ambassador suffers from early onset dementia in an attempt to convince people that Putin does not, in fact, have Trump in his back pocket. And the sanctions snafu wasn’t the only misconception the perpetually wrong Kudlow attempted to correct on Tuesday. In addition to effectively telling the press not to listen to Haley because grandma has good days and bad days, the former pundit explained that when Trump directed advisers to look into rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership last week, no one was supposed to take his words seriously:

Kudlow downplayed the possibility the U.S. would enter into negotiations to rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, calling it more of a “thought than a policy” for now.