Jesse Ventura visited the Chad Hartman show last week and had a lot to say about Russia. If you haven’t been keeping up with the former governor, he’s been contributing to Russia Today, Russia’s the state-run media outlet, since 2016, and has had his own shown “The World According to Jesse” since 2017. It runs on Friday nights.

Listen to the full interview below. It covers his thoughts on the NFL anthem controversy, his run for the governor, and how he manages without a cell phone, among other topics:

Last year, RT was forced to register as a foreign agent in the United States, after US intelligence concluded that it was a propaganda arm of the Kremlin, and had played a role in Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump.

Ventura said that as a consequence, he can no longer lobby politicians, despite being a former mayor and governor. He suggested that the decison to label RT as a foreign agent was part of a larger plan to create a new cold war with Russia to fuel the military industrial complex.

“'I’m a mayor. I'm a governor and I'm a tax paying citizen my entire life. I cannot go in to the legislative process in Washington now because I work for a foreign agent, RT. Yet we don't do that to the BBC. We don't do that to the Chinese. We don't do it to Al Jazeera. We only censor RT here,” he said. "I'll tell you what's going on here, Chad. We live in an economic society of war. We have to be at perennial war for the economy to move."

As for Russia’s alleged attempts to influence the 2016 election, Ventura said that, if Russia did it, we should thank them for revealing that the Democratic primary contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton was "rigged."

“Why is it that the media during this whole Russian investigation is going after allegedly the messenger instead of the message? Because what came out of this, through the Democratic convention and the emails, was the fact that Democratic thing was fixed, it was rigged. Bernie could not win, Hillary was going to win,” Ventura said. “That's your story, and yet they've deep-sixed that and they're going after who allegedly exposed it — the Russians. We should be thanking them for exposing the corruption of our election. If they did it.”

When pressed by Hartman as to if he could be critical of Putin on his RT show, Ventura said it’s not a subject he would cover as Russia is not his area of expertise. “I don't know that much about Russia. They didn't hire me to talk about Russia. They hired me to talk about the United States and what I know here,” he said.

Yet, Ventura did have opinions on Putin and Russian elections. He and Hartman had an exchange on the issue:

Ventura: “You know what bugs me, Chad? We're always referring to Putin as a dictator… He is not a dictator. He's elected.

Hartman; Do you think they have free elections?

Ventura: Yes. You want to know why?

Hartman: No...No pressure at all?.

Ventura: You want to know why?

Hartman: His enemies vanish though, would you agree with that?

Ventura: I don’t know, but you want to know why?

Hartman: Yes, you do.

Ventura: You want to know why? When Putin took over as president, the average Russian was making $21,000 a year. Today that same Russian is making $71,000 a year. Why do you think he wins with 80 percent?... you got your personal wealth tripled or better than tripled. I think I’d be voting for him.

On the free election point, many Russian observers based outside of Russia would disagree with Ventura’s assertion that the elections there are "free.” Russia does hold elections, but the state-controlled media coverage favors Putin, and there are questions about who is allowed to actually run for office as well as allegations of electoral fraud. As an op-ed in the Guardian put it in February:

“Putin’s control of Russia’s television outlets and other media means political opponents are virtually invisible, unless they are in court on a charge. By contrast, his own public appearances receive fawning blanket coverage. There are no presidential debates, no unsanctioned opinion polls. Rival candidates do exist, but they resemble sparring partners whose task is to legitimise the process while helping the champ show off his best punches.”

As Ventura noted, average salaries did rise in Russia after Putin took control, from 2000-2012, but then plummeted in 2014 following a drop in oil prices and the imposition of economic sanctions following the country’s annexation of Crimea. They started to climb back up in 2016, and appear to be rising again this year.

Some arguments Ventura made were good for radio, but are difficult to fact check. “We don't elect our president. The electoral college does. They are bound by nothing. So unless Russia got to the electorate... and see media don't talk about this stuff... So unless Russia got to our electoral college, how could they possibly affect our election?” he said.

Ventura also argued that RT was designated a foreign agent because they held third party debates in the 2016 presidential election. “We held third party debates, we gave the Constitution Party, the Libertarians and the Green Party a platform. And for that, we've now been penalized.”

Ventura referred to a declassified version of a report from The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Election”.

The report has an annex devoted to RT, which does cite the fact that the network held third party debates. It suggests the way the network framed them, with hosts claiming that the “US two-party system does not represent the views of at least one-third of the population and is a ‘sham,’” was part of a larger effort by the Russian government to undermine faith in the US electoral process.

The US government has made no explicit claim that the third party debates were the reason why RT was designated as a foreign agent, but Ventura, who ran as an independent and has long been a champion of third parties, connected those dots.

