After actor AnnaLynne McCord was skewered this week for her viral video message that coddled Russian President Vladimir Putin, she offered a bizarre explanation for why she penned the poem. “I could easily have moved in the direction of becoming a dictator myself,” she told BuzzFeed News. The 34-year-old actor who starred in the 90210 reboot, posted the video message which opens with the verse: “Dear President Vladimir Putin, I’m so sorry that I was not your mother.” The video goes on to link Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to a lack of maternal love. “If certain circumstances of my life were different, were I a little less bent toward healing and more toward vindication, I could have been a darkly powerful person,” McCord said, apparently unaware of why her message had landed so poorly when asked what had prompted the poem. She said she empathized with children who grow up to commit horrific offenses due to a personal connection with “early life trauma.”