“ He has guests on who regularly appear on Russian state TV prior to this war ”
Like who ?
MacGregor.
MacGregor is conservative in many ways and was a Trump appointment, however he’s a little nutty on Russia:
In 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and was engaged in a conflict with Ukraine over its eastern parts, Macgregor appeared on Russian state-owned network RT where he called for the annexation of the Donbas and said residents of the region “are in fact Russians, not Ukrainians, and at the same time, you have Ukrainians in the west and in the north, who are not Russians.”[19][34]