When it comes to Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, the White House has projected mixed messages. Former press secretary Sean Spicer held that anything the president tweets is an “official statement by the president of the United States,” and yet Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, regularly ignores them: “They are what they are,” he told reporters, but “We develop policy in the normal, traditional staff way.” It appears that Russian president Vladimir Putin has sided with Spicey; this week, we learned that although he does not have a Twitter account, he keeps extremely close tabs on all things @realDonalTrump. “Moscow considers all statements made on [Trump’s] official Twitter account to be official, so reports are presented to President Putin about them, as well as about official statements that politicians make in other countries,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, noting that Trump’s tweets are included in Putin’s daily briefings.

Given access to the presidential Twitter feed, one needn’t be a former K.G.B. agent to figure out what makes the ex-beauty pageant owner tick: Fox News=good. CNN, The New York Times, MSNBC, and other purveyors of “FAKE NEWS”=bad. Anyone with the last name Trump=good. Hillary Clinton, “Chuck and Nancy,” Kirsten Gillibrand, the mayor of San Juan, black professional athletes, Bob Corker, Snoop Dogg, the F.B.I., Obamacare, late-night TV hosts, Mark Cuban, and Amazon=bad. In addition, a two-minute scan of the president’s tweets would reveal that he believes he does not get enough credit for certain achievements, such as, say, stock-market gains.

We’re not saying that this is the sole reason behind Putin’s recent glowing praise of Trump’s economic impact—just that maybe it was a very large contributing factor. “We see some quite serious achievements, even in this short period of time that he’s been working,” Putin said during his news conference on Thursday. “Look at the markets, how they’ve risen. That shows investors’ confidence in the American economy. It shows they believe in what President Trump is doing in this area.” He added that when they speak, he and Trump refer to each other as “Vladimir” (Vlad?) and “Donald.”

To most people, it’s obvious that Putin’s remarks were carefully crafted to play our egomaniac president like a fiddle. But to said egomaniac president, they were simply evidence of the great job he’s doing and that, perhaps, proof positive that Vlad is the only one who sees it. During a call between the two men after the Russian president’s press conference, Trump not only discussed strategy on North Korea, but reportedly took the opportunity to thank Putin for “acknowledging America’s strong economic performance.”