MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Pushing back against charges that Senator Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said on Tuesday that McConnell “has never been an asset to any country.”

“You can scour the four corners of the globe, and you will not find a nation that would ever in a million years consider Mitch McConnell an asset,” Putin said.

The Russian President urged pundits who have called McConnell a Russian asset “to look up the word ‘asset’ in the dictionary.”

“You will find that ‘asset’ means a useful or valuable thing,” Putin said. “The only part of that definition that fits McConnell is ‘thing.’ ”

Pressing his case further, he said that it was debatable whether McConnell was even an asset to his home state of Kentucky. “Maybe compared to Rand Paul he is, but that’s setting the bar ludicrously low,” he said.

Concluding his remarks, Putin said that people who ask, “Who does Mitch McConnell work for?” are asking the wrong question. “The question should be ‘When has Mitch McConnell ever worked?’ ” he said.