In a video posted on X, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson says he will soon interview Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
Carlson said he wanted to go ahead with the interview because “Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they are implicated in.”
It would be Putin’s first one-on-one interview with a Western journalist since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The 54-year-old’s visit to Moscow has been reported on voraciously in Russian state media with near-constant coverage of his every move, BBC reports.
“There are risks to doing an interview like this, obviously, so we’ve thought about it over many months,” Carlson said on his announcement video. He added that he paid for the trip to Russia himself and wanted to do the interview because “most Americans are not informed” on the conflict which is “reshaping the world,” blaming the mainstream media.
Tucker carlson confirms the putin interview pic.twitter.com/Yr6WjAp8Ii
— karma (@karma44921039) February 7, 2024
Since the war in Ukraine began, he said, Western journalists have interviewed Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he has previously called a “dictator” many times.
But they are “fawning pep sessions” aimed at amplifying Zelensky’s demand to get the US more and more involved in the war, Carlson insisted. “That is not journalism—it is government propaganda.”
Meanwhile, “not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview” Vladimir Putin, Carlson said.
Tucker Carlson is an outspoken defender of Putin
Tucker Carlson has been an outspoken defender of Putin since the war began. Just before Russia’s invasion, he claimed that “hating Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy” but urged his viewers to ask themselves why.
“Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?” Carlson said as Russian troops started to mass on Ukraine’s border. “These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is: No. Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that.”
After Russia had invaded, he changed his tone slightly during a different show, saying “Vladimir Putin started this war…He is to blame for what we’re seeing tonight in Ukraine.”
Carlson is known for circulating far-right ideas into mainstream politics and discourse. He has promoted conspiracy theories on topics such as demographic replacement, the January 6th United States Capitol attack, and Ukrainian bioweapons.
Tucker Carlson was one of America’s top-rated cable TV hosts, but he abruptly left Fox News last year. While at the US network, his shows frequently set the agenda for conservatives and, by extension, the Republican party.
He was hugely influential as the anchor of a late-night political talk show between 2016 and 2023 and has since launched a show on X.
In November 2023, Donald Trump said he’d consider Carlson as a potential running mate in 2024.
“I like Tucker a lot; I guess I would,” Trump said during an appearance on The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show this week. “I think I’d say I would, because he’s got great common sense.”
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