Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin is said to be a scoop for the right-wing commentator, who claimed he was the first Western journalist to talk to the Russian leader since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Carlson, who was fired by Fox News in April 2023 before launching his own streaming service, Tucker Carlson Tonight, soon after, said he wanted to interview Putin because he believed the US media was ‘corrupt’ and ‘lying’ to the American people about the war in Ukraine. He said he wanted to get Putin’s side of the story and to inform his viewers about what was really happening in the region.
However, the interview released on Thursday which lasted more than two hours may have been triggering for some part of the media. Here’s why:
Before the interview on Tuesday, Carlson said that he was the first Western journalist to interview Putin since the war in Ukraine began. He said that ‘not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview’ the Russian president at that time, and that he was ‘the only one who asked’.
This rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, as many Western journalists, including the BBC’s Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg, claimed that they have sent repeated requests to the Kremlin for an interview with president Putin, only to be ignored or rejected.
Also, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that they had indeed received many requests from Western outlets, but they chose Carlson because his position was ‘different’ from the ‘Anglo-Saxon media’. In his own words, Carlson was ‘not pro-Russian, not pro-Ukrainian, it’s pro-American’.
Another reason why the media is roasting his interview with Putin is that he did not ask any tough questions or challenge any of the Russian president’s claims.
According to BBC, Carlson let him ‘ramble’ on for a long time when giving a history lesson that he promised would only take a minute and defending his invasion of Ukraine.
Carlson did not confront Putin on any of the human rights violations, the political repression, the corruption, or the assassinations that his regime is accused of. He also did not press him on the fate of the jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who Putin said could be released in exchange for a deal with the US.
The third and final reason is that his interview is said to be misleading to his viewers. He is accused of not being truthful to the American people and that he only told them what Putin wanted them to hear.
The complaint from multiple sources was that Carlson did not tell his viewers that Putin may have invaded Ukraine because he wanted to prevent it from joining NATO and the EU, and to assert his dominance over the region. He also did not talk about how Putin is accused of violating international law, human rights, and the sovereignty of a neighboring country.
Following the release of Tucker Carlson’s interview, some of his peers have accused him of being a ‘useful idiot’, a ‘propagandist’ and a ‘liar’.
You can watch the full interview below:
