Tucker Carlson is in Russia to interview Putin. He’s already doing the bidding of the Kremlin
CNN
Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin hasn’t been posted online yet, but he is already doing the Russian authoritarian’s bidding.
Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin hasn’t been posted online yet, but he is already doing the Russian authoritarian’s bidding. In a video posted to X announcing the sit-down Tuesday — the first interview Putin has granted with a Western media figure since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago — Carlson predictably and dishonestly villainized the press. The right-wing extremist, who has lauded autocrats in recent years, claimed English-speaking outlets are “corrupt” and “lie” to their audiences as they disseminate “propaganda of the ugliest kind.” (Projection much?) As a supposed example of manipulative media behavior, Carlson accused journalists of engaging in “fawning pep sessions” when interviewing Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who the former Fox News host asserted he would like to earnestly sit down with, but once likened to a rat. “At the same time our politicians and media outlets have been doing this, promoting a foreign leader like he’s a new consumer brand,” Carlson said, “not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict: Vladimir Putin.” While technically true, Carlson is lying by omission, the very thing he accused the Western press of doing in the video he posted online. It is true that no Western journalist has interviewed Putin since the onset of the war, but it isn’t for a lack of trying. The actual reason is quite simple: Putin has declined to grant access — a fact that should make it all the more obvious as to why Carlson, of all people, has been welcomed into the Kremlin palace, while others have been denied. “Does Tucker really think we journalists haven’t been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full scale invasion of Ukraine?” CNN’s Christiane Amanpour rhetorically remarked upon seeing Carlson’s claim. “It’s absurd — we’ll continue to ask for an interview, just as we have for years now.”