Tucker Carlson is sick and tired of people claiming that he is soft on Russia. So the Fox News host—whose clips are regularly featured on Russia’s state-owned media, whose editor-in-chief has been known to gush over how “wonderful” he is—took time out of his show on Monday night to dispel those criticisms… by trashing Ukraine and China, and confirming that hell yeah he’d like to host a sit-down interview with Vladimir Putin.
After noting that he and his colleagues have been criticizing Joe Biden’s “lunatic push for war with Russia,” Carlson went on to downplay our country’s century-long rivalry with Russia, claiming that it’s China—not Russia—who is our true rival. And that “we have no legal or moral obligation to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” as they are not a vital ally to the U.S.
“Ukraine is not even a democracy,” Carlson yelped (no really, his voice went up an octave), “despite what Joe Biden endlessly claims. Ukraine is a corrupt eastern European autocracy that has spent millions of dollars lobbying politicians in Washington and, by the way, made Joe Biden’s family rich. Those are not Russian talking points; they are entirely true. And because they are true, no one in the administration is willing to debate or rebut them, not for a second. Instead, they just call you a ‘traitor.’”
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1495932356632494096
It took a minute, but that’s the point Carlson—the same man who made a documentary about how the Capitol riots were a false flag operation—was really attempting to make: That his deep desire to have a public tête-à-tête with Putin, despite the fact that he is a “tyrant” threatening what some people could be “the biggest war in Europe since 1945.” Carlson is clearly pretty annoyed that he’s being described as “un-American” for wanting to speak with Putin, even though—as he noted—NBC News interviewed him recently and “that was completely fine. But our efforts to do the same are not allowed.”
Carlson, like something out of a paranoid 1970s political thriller, says that it’s evident that Fox News is trying to be silenced. After reintroducing the old chestnut that the NSA had spied on the network’s emails and texts, Carlson made it clear that he will never shut up:
“[W]e won’t be quiet, and not just because [Fox News] is a new organization. We’re Americans, and we can talk to anyone we want. We can have any opinion we feel like having. That is not treason. It is not un-American. It’s the whole point of America. It’s our Bill of Rights distilled.”
Carlson then shared that his team had recently sent out yet another request to Putin asking for an interview, which would surely be as stimulating as watching Donald Trump chase after the Russian leader like a lovesick teen.
But just to prove that this is all about journalistic integrity, and absolutely, definitely, most certainly, no way, Jose about being outrageous or courting controversy, Carlson shared that they also put out a request to the president of Ukraine (though he failed to even mention his name, which—if you’re reading this, Tucker—is Volodymyr Zelenskyy). “We would like that interview, too,” Carlson said, being careful to note that “an interview is hardly an endorsement.”
Tucker: Today we sent another letter to Putin asking for an interview… We also sent a message to the President of Ukraine. We would like that interview too. Neither one of these men runs a democracy. By traditional American standards, both of them are tyrants… pic.twitter.com/yo0Qi5uDHD
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 22, 2022
The kicker, of course, was when Carlson announced that he had also invited David Cicilline—Rhode Island’s Democratic congressman, who called Carlson’s attempts to get Putin to sit down with him while the country is on the verge of starting a war with Ukraine “sickening” to sit down for an interview, too. He also turned on that famous Tucker charm when he described Cicilline as “a former mafia lawyer who represents one of our most corrupt states. He is a repulsive man.”
Flattery will get you everywhere.
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