Tucker Carlson: Putin takes charge as TV host gives free rein to Kremlin
The Russian leader was given the opportunity to expound familiar grievances unchallenged.
What's America's view on this Tucker Carlson?
"Sooner or later this will end in agreement," was Putin's message, arguing that Nato was coming to realise that defeating Russia on the battlefield would be impossible.
Does Putin realize that NATO is effectively fighting Russia with both arms tied behind it's back right now? We're funding Ukraine (who are doing a phenomenal job, fwiw), but we're not even giving them the top of the line hardware. If the US actually got involved, Russia would pretty much instantly lose any glimmer of air superiority they have, and Ukraine could advance all the way to Moscow under NATO air cover. Like, the only reason Russia still exists is because NATO hasn't even tried to fight Russia on the battlefield yet.
NATO isn't even fighting. NATO gave Ukraine their old boxing gloves and some advice.
And we're learning that a teenager with a drone can be hilariously effective against modern weapons.
So is Russia. Except Russia is learning how to combat the kids with drones too. They're gaining invaluable battlefield experience that NATO troops simply aren't.
Reports vary from side to side, from showing that Russians are curb stomping Ukraine to Ukraine is holding it's own. So, sure, NATO tossing the kid gloves to Ukraine and putting up a fight is comforting, but it isn't the whole picture. Russia wins a war of attrition. NATO is made up of democracies and war fatigue sets in fast when it's someone else's war. Russia is a de facto fascist dictatorship with deep oil pockets. The only thing that turns their troops around is the head of state dying, or a massive coup. Reports of ether being imminent seem to be rather premature.
NATO is Doc and Ukraine is Little Mac. Vodka Drunkinski doesn't stand a chance.
My guess is is does, but he wants the US to lose interest and move on so coloring this as an exercise in futility helps further that goal.
And it's great propaganda! Unless you are a smart Russian and realize he'll sacrifice as many Russian citizens as necessary to keep up the hoax.
Propaganda works. Period.
Does Putin realize it? Yes.
Does Putin want the people who watch Tucker to realize it? No.
Yeah right, NATO commands far more nuclear warheads than Russia! They'd definitely loose in a thermonuclear exchange!
Remember when NATO beat Vietnam 🇻🇳 by using a nuclear bomb?
Yeah Russia doesn't stand a chance in Ukraine do they?
If the US actually got involved air superiority would be the least of our worries. The minute any major NATO nation gets properly involved, the war goes nuclear very soon after
Putin said that about lethal aid, Putin said that about tanks, Putin said that about f-16s, etc. Will Putin really start Wolrd War 3 over The Donbas and Crimea?
They should have thought of that before co-signing the Budapest accords. At least two NATO countries are already involved.
The last time Russian units engaged Americans in combat they were so outmatched that the Russian chain of command disavowed their own guys and pretended not to know them. Nuclear conflagration would be a much better death by comparison.
In general, IMO this is getting way more press than it deserves.
Yeah, a lot of it is outrage bait. That is basically how Trump got elected, outrage -> coverage, coverage->legitimacy.
The American had touted his sit-down with Putin as a triumph for free speech, asserting that he was heading where no Western news outlets dared to tread.
its amazing that carlson points out his own purpose here is not 'news'.
Amusingly, even the russian government corrected him on that too - to paraphrase, "we have lots of requests to interview Putin, he just doesn't want to do it"
“we have lots of requests to interview Putin, he just doesn’t want to do it”
Because they're actual journalists who would ask serious questions.
The even more amazing part is that the Kremlin debunked him. They said they constantly get interview requests from journalists. They just never accept them.
Edit: Just saw this posted as a response already.
That's ok, now I can upvote it twice
what a waste of a great assassination possibility...
Tucker Carlson don't got that Seth Rogan build type for a mission like that...
But attack can take strange forms. And you will remember the tooth. The tooth. You will remember the tooth.
For the both of them
It takes days or weeks for the polonium to kick in. He might look to be in the clear for now, but don't count all your chickens before they get defenestrated.
Rogen and Franco should make The Interview 2 and have them killing Puti.
Tucker is our most famous right-winger. That's basically it. He can say whatever the hell he wants, due to our first amendment, which protects both freedom of speech and freedom of the press. This includes a freedom to willfully lie, unfortunately, unless one has been placed under oath.
But it shouldn't allow him to call what he does "news" or "journalism". Him, and others like him, should have bumpers before and after every segment that says "the views expressed are purely the opinion of the host and do not necessarily reflect reality or facts" and not at the breakneck speed they used to do those car dealer and drug commercial disclaimers.
That actually existed until Reagan repealed it. That paved the way for Rush Limbaugh and the rest snowballed.
He has just posted a video of him receiving gifts from the enemy, and he is giving aid to the enemy. This is not speech, this is an attack on America's interests.
It's one thing to campaign in the US and say "I like it when Putin genocides Ukrainians", but it's another thing to be paid by a country that we're indirectly at war with, and provide publishing and broadcasting services to their president, a man who is on the US Sanction list. The illegal thing here is not the speech, it's the business transaction.
Subpoena Tucker's emails and phone and prosecute for illegal business transactions.
Hopefully it won't protect this propagandist from Ukrainian drones.
You know when you're at a park, see a dog, feel something squish under your foot, and then pick up your fooh to look at it? Yeah, exactly like that but in human form
You know when you're wearing socks and you step in something wet, and sticky?
That
My view as an American is that Tucker Carlson is a traitor, white supremacist, and known propagandist, fuck that guy, in the ass, with a cactus.
As I said when some one suggested that with Putin. Don't do that to a cactus.
The part where he claims to have asked Bill Clinton if Russia could join NATO was hilarious, whether he ever asked Clinton or not. Other than that most of the interview was "We're just reclaiming Russian land from over a century ago" and "China is the real enemy".
I can't get over the complete lack of a chin.
Which one?
The only way I'd watch Tucker Carlson on purpose is in a cage fight with Mike Tyson. Pay-per-view is fine, but I'll travel if I have to.
My take is that Poland and Latvia need to secure their borders. Soon
Latvia just brought back mandatory military services for men 18 to 27. So I think they got the message
It'll either be trying to establish a land bridge to Kaliningrad (Poland and Lithuania), or invading Estonia next.
Poland is a NATO member so I don't think Russia is going to try anything there, at least officially. They might trigger some proxy war or internal political strife and claim to step in on a peace keeping mission though.
Remember when Lee Harvey Oswald defected to russia? And then changed his mind? I forget what happened after that.
Yep. Mmm hmmm.
Useful Idiot.
Outright fascist.
Why not both?
“Putin, what is your idea of a perfect Sunday?”
“Well are we going to have a serious conversation? Because firstly I need to tell you about the 1647 agreement between the ethnic Russians located in the western Donbas who sent a letter signed gestures off screen to aide here see these letters, completely legitimate. Completely. They say that Ukraine belongs to Russia for ever and ever and they are Nazis because in 1806 the countries border was changed in the Crimean-Polish revolutionary conflict led by the Tsar of Russia.”
I was expecting the interview to be over tea on the balcony.
Cucker Tarlson bringing us the “real” story. Putin is worried about slanted journalists not agreeing with his narrative, gets the biggest softball pitcher ever and can’t even talk around his ego. Mad cringe.
The article says absolutely nothing about what Putin said
I watched, but it truly is a bunch of rambling.
Putin pushed the CIA sniper incitement conspiracy theory, but didn't present evidence.
On the Nazi thing, he seems to be pivoting to he invaded because Ukraine doesn't have strong enough laws to prevent Nazi speech. Again not very compelling.
He again brings up the conflict pre-invasion in east UA, but fails to mention that Russia was backing the insurgents.
He brings up that the change of power in 2014 wasn't done to the letter of the UA constitution, but fails to mention that the current government clearly has a popular mandate.
He rehashes all the arguments that the West has been the aggressor since the fall of the USSR with NATO expansion.
Other than that it was pretty off topic. Tucker doesn't press him much at all, and when he does Putin deflects and Tucker gives up.
Overall nothing you wouldn't expect.
ETA: just remembered, this was kind of strange. The Nord Stream pipeline blasts were brought up and it was one of the few things that Tucker pushed him on for evidence that UA/US were behind it, but Putin doesn't want to talk evidence. It's kinda weird since this might be the one point where Russia has some ground to stand on, but Putin just defects. Maybe he doesn't want to set a precedent that evidence is required.
The Nord Stream pipeline blasts were brought up and it was one of the few things that Tucker pushed him on for evidence that UA/US were behind it, but Putin doesn’t want to talk evidence. It’s kinda weird since this might be the one point where Russia has some ground to stand on, but Putin just defects. Maybe he doesn’t want to set a precedent that evidence is required.
I don't believe it was UA or US. IIRC (a) the mass media suspected it was Russia and (b) Russian navy was spotted.
Thank you for this.
This line of critique is wrongheaded and empowers Tucker. Putin already commands a platform far above Tucker's, a media figure cannot provide a bigger platform for Putin than the one he already has. Many liberal journalists have interviewed Putin without facing this critique, it's applied here because Tucker is a reactionary shithead.
The better critique is that you have for-profit entertainment companies capitalizing on this, and how that affects the content.
What liberal media journalists have managed to interview Putin since he began his invasion of Ukraine in 2022? I thought Carlson was the first Western person to manage that.
Adding the qualifier of "since 2022" seems to presume there's an unspoken taboo between western liberal media that Putin shan't be interviewed, rather than Putin being more restrictive than he already was and seeing an opportunity in Tucker. Lionel Barber is probably the closest a "real" US journalist could have been to Putin and writes about the increasing difficulty of this in 2020. This includes psychological tricks like being made to wait excessively long to weaken his cognition before the meeting. He has a good piece on Tucker's interview about how Putin ran the show and used him.
The reason why Putin chose this interview is because Tucker is a locus of division in US politics. Tucker isn't raising Putin's platform, Putin is raising Tucker's platform. This imbues Tucker's reactionary politics with more legitimacy, which benefits Putin.
I expected nothing less.
Most sane people hate him. That's why we will lose the election to Trump.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The American had touted his sit-down with Putin as a triumph for free speech, asserting that he was heading where no Western news outlets dared to tread.
Carlson's claim also ignored the fact that Russia's president has spent the past two decades in power systematically stamping out free speech at home.
He talked about a Russian "patriot" who had "eliminated a bandit" in a European capital, seeming to confirm previous reports that Russia is demanding a prisoner swap with Vadim Krasikov.
It's all part of how Putin justified his full-scale invasion, almost two years ago - along with "de-Nazifying" Ukraine, which he claimed is still a work in progress.
"Sooner or later this will end in agreement," was Putin's message, arguing that Nato was coming to realise that defeating Russia on the battlefield would be impossible.
The American did not push Putin at all on political repression at home, which includes locking up vocal opponents of the war in jail.
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