“The Daily Show” correspondent Jordan Klepper suggested on Sunday that Tucker Carlson’s softball interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in February was a major turning point for Donald Trump’s MAGA base.

Trump supporters at the presumptive GOP nominee’s campaign rallies used to praise only certain elements of Putin’s authoritarian rule, Klepper told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki during promotion for his upcoming “Daily Show” special titled “Jordan Klepper Fingers The Pulse: Moscow Tools.”

But that all changed with the former Fox News personality’s friendly sit-down with the Russian leader and his subsequent features praising Russian society, said Klepper.

Now Republicans are openly “just celebrating” Putin. It’s “a real shift” in the GOP, he said.

“I think the Tucker Carlson interview was a really important one. When we went out to these rallies in Pennsylvania and we went to one in Wisconsin as well and you ask what they thought of Moscow, more and more people pointed to the Tucker Carlson interview, ‘Putin looks like a nice guy, he seems smart, the subways look super clean,’” said Klepper.

“Folks like this see Moscow, they want to think a place like that is better than [President Joe] Biden’s America and they buy into this image and it keeps getting fed over and over to them,” he continued.

The “darker question,” said Klepper, was whether the MAGA base is being “fooled by Russia” or is “actually leaning towards an autocratic regime.”

“They like Putin being anti-woke, they like these anti-LGBTQ policies,” he said. “So there’s something darker that lies underneath a lot of this. It’s folks not just being swayed by Vladimir Putin but there’s something there in the way in which he treats his citizen and controls his country that is appealing to a majority of the GOP base,” he added.

Watch the interview here:

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