His chances of a happy ending under President Donald Trump would be zero, I observe. What about under President Hillary Clinton? “You’re trying to drag me into a political quagmire,” he protests. He collects himself, looking intensely at the ground, before sidestepping the question: “I think we should have better choices. We’re a country of 330m people and we seem to be being asked to make a choice between individuals whose lives are defined by scandal. I simply think we should be capable of more.”
If he’s tough on the options in US politics, his willingness to tweet criticism of Russian politics to his 2.3m followers has not gone unnoticed. “A lot of people who care about me tell me to shut up, but if I was married to my own self-interest, I never would have left Hawaii.
“I can’t fix the human rights situation in Russia, and realistically my priority is to fix my own country first, because that’s the one to which I owe the greatest loyalty. But though the chances are it will make no difference, maybe it’ll help.”
He gathers up his dark glasses: it’s time for him to melt into the Moscow crowds. A final question: the Stone film shows him spiriting his trove of secrets out of the NSA on a micro-SD card hidden in a Rubik’s Cube. True or false?
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