In an interview set to air just before the Super Bowl, President Trump told Bill O’Reilly that he respects Russian President Vladimir Putin and that he hopes Russia will help the United States crush the Islamic State.

“I say it’s better to get along with Russia than not,” the president told O’Reilly, who responded by pointing out that Putin is a killer.

“We’ve got a lot of killers,” he said. “You think our country’s so innocent?” (emphasis added).

Vladimir Putin is a ruthless authoritarian who murders political opponents and journalists in cold blood. His goal is to rebuild the Soviet empire so he can rule the world. To that end, he’s forging strong alliances in the East in order to bring down the West—particularly the United States. Even now, he’s the Middle East kingpin, joining forces with the likes of Bashar al Assad and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. And as the escalating violence in Ukraine over the last week demonstrates, this is a man who has no respect for the territorial integrity of Russia’s neighbors. Russia has seized Crimea and currently occupies eastern Ukraine.

Just last week, 33 people were killed—many of them civilians—and thousands more are now trapped due to the latest escalation in violence triggered by Russia-backed separatist rebels. It’s the bloodiest violence in eastern Ukraine since 2015.

But America has a lot of killers too. That’s President Trump’s message for Americans on this Super Bowl Sunday. Our country’s not so innocent either.

In a television program we aired two weeks ago, my father showed what happens to America when it “gets along” with someone like Vladimir Putin.

Much of the material in that program has been converted into an article that will appear in the March issue of the Trumpet magazine. You can read that here.