Writing in the Guardian, Edward Snowden cannot fathom why anyone would criticize him for asking Russian President Vladimir Putin a question on a call-in TV show:

I was surprised that people who witnessed me risk my life to expose the surveillance practices of my own country could not believe that I might also criticise the surveillance policies of Russia, a country to which I have sworn no allegiance, without ulterior motive. 

The problem with useful idiots is that they don’t know they’re useful idiots. The only reason Snowden is permitted to ask Putin a question on Russian TV is that it gives Putin an opportunity to poke our country in the eye and claim he has a higher regard for civil liberties than the U.S.. Of course, had an ordinary Russian tried to ask such a question he would have found himself in a gulag.

I hate to break it to Eddie Snowden, but when you check into the Chateau Putin you’ve given him and Mother Russia your allegiance. In this case, allegiance is being paid in the form of the information Snowden stole from the NSA.