Tucker Carlson’s much-hyped interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin is finally out and has left the left-aligned media as well as adherents of globalist establishment fuming.
The nearly 2-hour interview conducted on Tuesday, February 6, in Moscow was posted to Tucker Carlson’s Twitter/X page on Thursday (February 8, 2024). At the time of this writing, the interview has amassed well over 150 million views, over 60 thousand comments, and hundreds of thousands of reposts, in just over 24 hours of its airing on the social media platform.
The news of Tucker Carlson’s visit to Moscow ahead of the interview stirred a storm of anger and bilious reactions mainly among those on the left, but including some conservatives, both in and outside the United States. Leftist news and opinion site Politico cited Financial Times editor Lionel Barber calling Tucker Carlson “a propagandist.”
CNN’s Oliver Darcy went on to call Carlson “right-wing extremist” whose “pilgrimage to Moscow is already a major victory for Putin.” Born-again Democrat Bill Kristol, who is known as a vocal never-Trumper, called for a “total and complete shutdown of Tucker Carlson re-entering the United States.”
Sebastian Gorka, a conservative commentator, took a dig at Carlson without naming the journalist and called him an agent of Kremlin.
In Europe, some current and former members of the left-leaning European Parliament even called for imposing sanctions on Tucker Carlson for going to Russia to interview President Putin. However, after the interview was confirmed by both Carlson and Russia, the Russian News Agency TASS reported that it reached out to the EU Council and learnt that they are not considering a ban on Carlson. The story wrote:
“We have no serious reasons to blacklist this journalist at this stage,” the source added.
Many conservatives, on the other hand, played off the frustration of their political rivals and mocked their reactions to the news of Tucker-Putin interview. Celebrated Hollywood actor James Woods, a staunch conservative, shared a clip of Hillary Clinton’s MSNBC interview, wherein she called Carlson a “useful idiot,” with his comment: “Tucker Carlson is scaring all the right vermin.
MAGA conservative Thomas Greenberg came to Carlson’s defense in his video commentary and said that the legacy media is freaking out over Carlson’s interview with Putin because they can’t control the narrative in this case.
Critics also mocked Joe Biden for his senility and failing memory as against President Putin’s sharpness and knowledge of history. Independent journalist Danny Haiphong posted a clip of Biden’s recent memory lapse during a speech in which he called Egyptian leader El-Sisi the president of Mexico.
In her op-ed published in Russia Today (February 9), columnist Rachel Marsden critically analyzed Carlson’s interview with President Putin and pointed out some flaws in Carlson’s line of questioning Putin. But she also underscored the flawed reaction to the interview and opined that the real propagandists are those who dismiss Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview. In her words:
“The biggest achievement of Carlson’s Putin interview is arguably that it added some much-needed grey matter to the Western depiction of a black and white global landscape.”