On Saturday, Donald Trump joined Fox News’ Vladimir Putin unofficial fan club. You may recall that last week, Fox’s Ralph Peters slobbered over Russia’s President Putin. Saturday, Trump visited Cashin’ In’s special “Freedom Summit” that also included Sarah Palin and Rand Paul.

Host Eric Bolling opened the telecast with this “fair and balanced” introduction:

Donald, Rand, and Sarah. They’re all here fired up and ready to bring America back from the brink of liberal progressive failure. If you love your country and your freedom, pull up a chair, put down that remote, we’re talking life, liberty, and the pursuit of conservative values.

Near the end of the interview, Bolling asked Trump for his opinion of Putin. Trump replied:

Well, he’s done an amazing job of taking the mantle, and he’s taken it away from the president, and you look at what he’s doing and so smart when you see the riots in a country because they’re hurting the Russians, OK, we’ll go and take it over, and he’s really going step by step by step and you have to give him a lot of credit. Interestingly on the Miss Universe Pageant, we just left Moscow. He could not have been nicer. He was so nice and so everything, but you have to give him credit that what he’s doing for that country in terms of their world prestige is very strong.

Bolling asked, “Last thought. Who’s the better leader? President Obama or President Putin?” Clearly, he knew the answer and just wanted Trump to explicitly say so.

And he did. Trump said, “Well it’s not even a contest at this point. No, Obama can maybe come back and maybe something happens, but so far, he has played Obama like a fiddle.”

Maybe the Donald could move to Russia if he loves it so much. Maybe when he gets there he could try demanding Putin produce his birth certificate and prove he’s really Russian.