Robert Mackey writes in The Intercept that Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard have become favorites on Russian state television because they praise Putin. The Putin regime loves FOX News.
Carlson’s attacks on Biden and the American government thrills the Russian propagandists.
“These people are so ghoulish,” Carlson said of U.S. officials who provided military aid to Ukraine. “Of course they’re promoting war,” Carlson continued, as his comments were translated into Russian, “not to maintain the democracy that is Ukraine. Ukraine is not a democracy. It has never been a democracy in its history, and it’s not now. It’s a client state of the Biden administration…”
On Wednesday night, just hours before Putin ordered the attack on Ukraine to begin, two excerpts from Carlson’s most recent program were featured in Russian state television’s 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. news broadcasts.
Carlson had started his show Tuesday night with a sarcastic monologue in which he told viewers: “Democrats in Washington have told you it’s your patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a mandate. Anything less than hatred for Putin is treason. Many Americans have obeyed this directive. They now dutifully hate Vladimir Putin. Maybe you’re one of them. Hating Putin has become the central purpose of America’s foreign policy. It’s the main thing that we talk about. Entire cable channels are now devoted to it. Very soon, that hatred of Vladimir Putin could bring the United States into a conflict in Eastern Europe.”
Carlson’s comments were so welcome in Moscow that an excerpt from that rant with Russian subtitles was quickly produced by the Russian-language service of RT, the government-funded network formerly known as Russia Today…
Like Carlson, Gabbard sought to blame the U.S. and NATO for supposedly provoking Putin’s attack on Ukraine and suggested that Americans would suffer from higher energy prices if Russia was sanctioned for invading Ukraine…
On Thursday, after Russia launched its military assault on Ukraine, Gabbard posted the video of her comments about sanctions on Twitter and suggested, without evidence, that doing anything to press Putin to stop the invasion of Ukraine could lead to a nuclear war.
Gabbard has transitioned from being a Democratic candidate for President to being a speaker at the Trump-loving Conservative Political Actuon Conference (CPAC).
Rolling Stone wrote about her transformation:
Tulsi Gabbard, the former Hawaii congresswoman who sought the 2020 Democratic nomination for president, is completing her metamorphosis from iconoclast progressive to hardcore conservative by appearing as a featured guest at the Trumpy love-in known as the Conservative Political Action Conference.
CPAC 2022 begins Wednesday in Orlando, where Gabbard will join a roster of GOP loyalists — including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican senators Ted Cruz, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, and Representatives Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene — in building buzz for the star of the circus, former President Donald Trump.
According to the conference agenda, Gabbard will appear at the Friday night “Ronald Reagan Dinner,” where the keynote speaker is the former Fox News star conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck.
Quislings.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What can I say? “Tulsi is nuts.”
And I prefer Putin over Biden too…The US, regardless who sits in the White House, has been nothing but trouble and wars and toppling governments it doesn’t like, since the end of WW 2.
How many people has Biden poisoned or jailed for criticizing his administration? As compared to the Russian Pillsbury Doughboy? Has Biden jailed his political opponents?
I prefer Biden, thank you very much. Biden did get us out of Afghanistan at long last.
Don’t you think Putin looks positively reptilian? I keep expecting to see a nervous little tongue (forked) come flickering out of his mouth.
No one forces you to live here. Since you admire Putin, you could live in Russia. He pushed through a law that makes him president until 2036. So you are assured of stability, if not prosperity, for another 14 years of Putin’s leadership.
I think peskyvera already lives in Russia.
Are you talking about 1999 Putin? Or his impersonator in SNL?
The mad man has a plenty of nasty reputation for killing and assassinating politicians and critics he doesn’t like. He’s Trump on steroid.
Can anyone recall the America First movement in the time after Hitler invaded Poland?
I am not old enough to remember it personally but as I grew old enough to understand, I learned about it. The America Firsters were not only isolationists, they were anti-Semites, and many sympathized with Hitler.
The America First Movement was anti-Semitic, Fascist successor to the German American Bund. So, it was altogether fitting that the Trump people resurrected this slogan.
I read the article, looked at all of Carlson’s and Gabbard’s quotes and, I guess I’m obtuse, but I’m not finding any praise of Putin in there. Or is simply criticizing Democrats de facto praising Putin? Can someone help me with the logic there? This is classic 2003 Bush-era “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” tripe. Any attempt to understand the situation in any sort of context other than what is directly presented by the U.S. empire media machine is “treason”. Anything you disagree with is “Russian disinformation”. Must be nice living in an unfalsifiable world
There was a time when you were better than this. I think you’re still capable of being better than this. Wake up.
Dienne, have you figured out why Russian state TV admires Carlson and Gabbard?
Touché, Diane!
Here’s Carlson making nice with Putin: quote from theguradiandotcom, 2-26-22 – “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia?” Carlson said as he then recited a rightwing tip sheet of pet causes. “Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity?” end quote. Carlson made these comments just before the invasion of Ukraine.
dienne77,
Please link to any criticism of Putin made by Carlson, Gabbard or yourself.
Being unable to criticize a man who is currently bombing families and killing children IS being with Putin. Your silence is complicity.
All of us criticize Democrats but you are the only one who will never criticize Putin. It was pretty bad before, but your refusal to criticize Putin when he was killing families is beyond the pale.
The truth is that in Russia, you are either with Putin or you get poisoned or arrested. Is that why you are so terrified to speak out against him?
I think Tulsi Gabbard has PTSD so bad its twisted her mind into a knot.
Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard have both gone off the deep end, and Donald Trump only grudgingly criticizes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But another person whom this blog reveres also uses the atrocity in Ukraine to advance her preferred narrative: race everywhere, all the time. Ms. Ravitch, I commend you on your support for the brave people of Ukraine. How do you respond to Nikole Hannah Jones using Putin’s aggression to advance her own partisan, racialist agenda?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10558235/Nikole-Hannah-Jones-blasts-media-insidious-racism-heavy-coverage-Ukraine-invasion.html
There is absolutely nothing “pro-Putin” in what Nikole Hannah Jones writes. I AGREE with her. She is saying something absolutely true. Arguably maybe it wasn’t the right time, but even that is up for debate and she acknowledged that the people in Ukraine were suffering.
Comparing a woman with integrity like NHJ with folks like Carlson and Gabbard who use lies to try to justify their love of warmongerer Putin makes me wonder what “Lester Miles” agenda is.
I suspect that agenda is to deceive.
Lester Miles
I guess you are pretty ill informed . Perhaps that is intentional.
“Fighting erupts in Taiz as Yemeni troops target Houthi positions”
“Yemeni armed forces shoot down Saudi coalition’s ScanEagle spy drone over Hajjah province”
Forget picking good guys and bad guys . Twenty thousand civilians dead . An on going famine How many Americans could tell you what continent Yemen is on. After 6 years of war after a humanitarian crisis. When was the last time you saw a story on Yemen on any American media. .
The two headlines are from international media sources in the last few days .
Hannah Jones is right . And you are a hopeless troll . Try harder
The only Yemen coverage I have seen is on Vice News. Mainstream news ignores this terrible crisis.
I had not followed Nicole Hannah-Jones’ comments on Twitter. I admire her and I admire The 1619 Project. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything she writes or believes. The only person I agree with 100% of the time is me, and in retrospect, I often disagree with things I wrote in the past. A full-fledged invasion, especially one that is unprovoked, is big news. Of course, it is a world crisis because one sovereign nation, with a powerful military and nuclear weapons, has invaded another sovereign nation, in violation of international law and the UN Charter. NHJ admits in one of her tweets that people should care about Ukraine. What Russia does affects the peace of the world. If Putin gets away with naked aggression, it will encourage other dictators to do the same. This is not a racial issue.
The only person I agree with 100% of the time is me, and in retrospect, I often disagree with things I wrote in the past.” That certainly lightened my mood for the day.
The only person I agree with 100% of the time is me, and in retrospect, I often disagree with things I wrote in the past.”
Oh Lord. That is beautiful. So funny and so true.
Nikole Hannah Jones writes about race in America. That’s all she does. So it’s not surprising that she would view this conflict through that lens.
She also seems in that thread to believe that the Mercator maps distort the size of land masses toward the poles because of racism.
Anyway, I’ve just criticized Saint Hannah Jones, so excuse me now while I’m piled on by the usual suspect.
Btw, here is what IQ45, the Idiot, the Loser Former Guy said a couple days ago, in his typical toddler English, about Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine:
TRUMP: “I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. He used the word ‘independent’ and ‘we’re gonna go out and we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna help keep peace.’ You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”
What a vile cretin.
Tulsi is Jill Stein 2.0 – just another Kremlin lackey whose job it is to split and bleed dem votes so seditious traitors can install unelected Putin puppets.
yup
It shows you that Tulsi Gabbard never really cared about the issues she professed to care about. It was just performance.
The people who used to pretend their over the top rabid criticism of Democrats (and not Republicans) was because they were “progressive” were always suspect to me because their arguments didn’t really add up. There was good criticism from REAL progressives — like Bernie Sanders and AOC — and there was the over the top rabid attacks from others with no integrity.
Putin’s invasion was a chance for those trolls or Tulsi Gabbards to prove me wrong. Instead, they proved me right.
Hearing them rabidly defending Putin?? They clearly never believed in progressive values at all.
” Hating Putin has become the central
purpose of America’s foreign policy.”
Gosh Pucker, are you another schill
for the three foreign policy oligarchies,
the oil and gas industry, the arms merchants,
and the financiers?
Your reductio ad absurdum may dazzle
those that can’t hear above the din
of concocted notoriety, but it doesn’t
hide the money trail.
In terms of the military-industrial complex,
the oil and gas (and mining) complex, and
the banking and real estate complex, they’re
on a roll.
The past week’s military escalation
promises soaring arms sales to NATO
and other U.S. allies.
Oil and gas, check the pump prices,
raw materials, ditto.
The banking and real estate complex,
can you spell inflation squeeze?
“No Brick,”
Who started the war? Do you know?
Imagine what Carlson would have said if someone had criticized American response to some event during a Trump administration.
The Dems, not Biden, should go after Carlson and Fox News now that everyone including some of the radical Republicans can see what Putin is, although anyone that has read the news of the past twenty years has Putin’s number. BTW the FCC has called for an investigation to see if there is a link between some news outlets and the Russian state.https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/25/tech/fcc-russia-ownership-probe/index.html
Anybody ever read Herman & Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”? “It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”, by means of the propaganda model of communication.[1]” We have our propaganda & Russia has theirs. The content of both reflects the national interests of both countries. That’s why there wasn’t much coverage of the 100,00 Yemenis who have died in the civil war by our corporate media outlets. Saudi Arabia is our ally, so turning our citizens against Saudi Arabia’s involvement in that war would not be in our national interests.
So National Interest is defined as the interests of the ruling elites, who define those interests. Assume I buy your take on Yemen and there are a host of reasons that elites from the Neo Con establishment would support the Saudis and even a few legitimate reasons having to do with Iran whether we agree with them or not.
Now ask in whose interest Putin’s invasion of a neighboring Democracy is in.
When I hear on the news now that they are going to crack down on the Russian oligarchs and their families weath and travels abroad, I thought, ya, just like on the Saudis after 9/11? I’ll believe it when I see it.
The difference is that the U.S. has an elected constitutional democracy and Russia is a dictatorship with no meaningful constitutions or elections. Putin changed the Constitution so he will be in power until 2034. At that time, he may change it again, so he can be dictator for life.
The other difference is that in Russia, Noam Chomsky would be thrown in prison or much worse if Putin decided his ideas were too threatening.
It is horrible that the news media in the US will often amplify right wing propaganda.
But at least people who are saying other things are still free — as long as the Republicans don’t take power — to say them.
At least Noam Chomsky gets to say what he wants, even if he doesn’t have a mass media amplifying it. He can still have his ideas posted on a blog that people can link to.
Yes, that’s how they shape the national opinion in the form of consensus and boot out the ones that go against it. It’s very effective when it comes to war and national election. In US, corporate media is a key player. In Russia and China, it’s usually the state and its propaganda apparatuses who regulate and control the opinion.