I have not seen Tucker Carlson’s interview of Vladimir Putin but I’ve heard plenty about it. On Chris Wallace’s show, Bret Stephens of the New York Times called Tucker the “Tokyo Rose” of our time. Hillary Clinton, interviewed on MSNBC by Alex Wagner, said he was “a useful idiot,” a term first used by Lenin to describe the dupes who parroted Soviet propaganda.
British investigative journalist John Sweeney reviewed Tucker’s interview and was even more scathing in his reaction. John Sweeney blogs at JohnSweeneyRoars. There is more to read so open the link.
He wrote:
Two narcissists but only one looking-glass: what was so bleakly and blackly comical about the Russian strong man Vladimir Putin granting an audience to the far-right showman, Tucker Carlson, was that even the American stooge could not hide his irritation at how boring the little man in the Kremlin was. Putin sensed that annoyance and gave Carlson bitch-slap after bitch-slap.
It would have been more amusing if Carlson had tottered out but the gravity of their shared neo-fascist agenda kept the two planet-sized egos in orbit, just. However, the big reveal of the-useful-idiot-meets-serial-killer show was that the two beauties really didn’t get on. Down the track, I look forward to a leak of what Carlson really felt about Putin. Lines like: “ungrateful dwarf sonofabitch” come to the novelist in me.
Sweeney the journalist notes the glorious moment when Putin upends the conventions and attacks the supplicant for a previous job application. Putin, puffy cheeked on steroids as ever, is waxing long about the 2014 Maidan revolution when the unarmed Ukrainian opposition took to the streets to bring down Kremlin puppet President Viktor Yanukovych:
Putin: “The armed opposition committed a coup in Kiev. What is that supposed to mean? Who do you think you are? I wanted to ask the then US leadership.
Tucker: With the backing of whom?
Vladimir Putin: With the backing of CIA, of course, the organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand. We should thank God, they didn’t let you in.
Carlson looks so mortified that I wondered whether his carefully coiffed hairdo might levitate in horror, as well it might. Who would have known that this career anti-elite hobgoblin had once tried to join the Company? Well, the former head of the Russian intelligence service, for one.
I feel I am entitled to be critical of Tucker Carlson because, firstly, he is a traitor to the human soul, and, secondly, I have interviewed Putin myself. Back in 2014, after the shooting down of MH17 by a Russian BUK missile, my colleagues at BBC Panorama and I worked out that the little man in the Kremlin was going to open some museum of mammothology in Yakutsk in the far east of Siberia. I rocked up, popped my question, Putin was caught in the bright lights of the Kremlin’s patsy media cameras – they thought my popping up had official permission – and Peskov, his PR man, was embarrassed. A few hours a goon came and punched me in the stomach. The Kremlin didn’t like my question. Still, I got off lightly.
Carlson’s interview set out several things about Putin to his core audience of ignorant white Americans who don’t like the twenty-first century (although they have been pretty clear to some of us for two decades, more): that Putin is boring, very; that he is nasty, very; that he is used to getting his own way to a pathological extent; that he is a liar; that he is incapable of explaining why he has invaded Ukraine in simple terms that make sense because he can’t.
Carlson wanted so little from the Russian dictator but the pleonexic couldn’t bring himself to be the least bit generous. Pleonexia is a term first applied to Putin by the great Kremlin-watcher Masha Gessen, meaning: having an irresistible urge to take things that rightfully belong to another. I wrote a whole chapter of my book, Killer In The Kremlin, on Putin’s craving to take from others: objects, countries, yes and yes, but also the time of others too. Putin turned up late for our departed Queen, late for the King of Spain, late for the Pope and four and a half hours late, of course, for then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. So Carlson should not have been the least bit surprised that Putin stole his time, wasting the precious first half hour of the interview by setting out a dark fairy story that history showed that Russia has a right to repress Ukraine.
How can I best summarise Putin’s case? He was talking bollocks, total bollocks. The evolution of Ukraine and then Russia – Kyiv was a well-organised citadel in the tenth century when Moscow was still a few sticks in a bog – is messy and complicated. But the modern world started in 1945 and rule number one, in Europe at least, was that no country should invade another. Nothing whatsoever from the past trumps that. Full stop.
One other Putin comment which will drive up the Polish defence budget by another five percentage points was that the Poles somehow brought on 1939 themselves, that they should have negotiated with Hitler. What? Hello?
Carlson is a great showman, his glands unctuous, his tongue fluent but he is also a profoundly stupid man who even failed to get a degree from the rich kid’s diploma factory his family money sent him to. I didn’t expect him to challenge Putin on the Russian’s fairytale history lesson but there is one simple thing that even a very thick CIA reject should have cottoned on to. One of Putin’s beefs about Ukraine is that their leaders are Nazi. President Zelenskiy is Jewish. Hello?
OK, let me break this down in a simple way by telling a true story of just how un-Nazi Ukraine is, from my own personal experience. At the height of the Battle of Kyiv, when the Russian army was twelve miles away from the city centre, I got a call from the Jewish Chronicle in London, inviting me to be their stringer. I explained that I wasn’t Jewish. They replied that they knew but there was no-one else. I said yes because it struck me as funny to work for a Jewish paper in a country the Kremlin said was Nazi. I got to hang out with the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, to see Jewish aid relief to the front lines of Ukraine, to talk to soldiers who were Jewish – and also Muslim and Christian and those with no faith. The one thing I have not seen is strong evidence of Ukraine being Nazi. Because it isn’t.
All Carlson had to do was say: “but Mr Putin, how could Ukraine be Nazi if the President is Jewish?”
He did nothing of the kind. Carlson’s commitment to the cause, some kind of lower case Fascist International, was greater than his nous. But we knew that, didn’t we?
The worry remains that Carlson’s core audience will, once again, place their prejudices above their ability to weigh evidence. That is what the political religion they call MAGA does. What we all saw is a thoroughly horrible human being with a closed mind meeting the President of Russia. The latter, it turns out, is also a thoroughly horrible human being with a very closed mind and a bore – a crushing one at that.
Open the link and read on.
John Sweeney made me laugh out loud with this post, especially with the first few words about two narcissists. A much needed release in these treasonous times!
I am incredulous reading an article that establishes how ludicrous the idea of a Jewish leader’s embrace of Nazism would be while, simultaneously, failing to note Putin’s right wing, (purportedly) Christ centered religion.
A refusal to discuss religion (I guess, unless, it is Jewish) is shortsighted.
Trump has selected Michael Whatley to lead the RNC. Whatley describes himself as, first, a Christian. Whatley has a masters degree in theology and a JD from Notre Dame. In high school, he volunteered for Jesse Helms’ campaign. Three years before that, Carl Anderson was serving as legislative aide to Jesse Helms. Anderson retired recently after a long tenure heading the Knights of Columbus.
What JD Vance (helps Putin’s cause), Carlson and Republicans share with Putin is belief in a strong White man governance model. Btw- Republican Vance, who conveniently converted to Catholicism in 2019, created the Catholic Hallow App which was advertised during the Super Bowl.
In the early 2000s Tucker Carlson was working for MSNBC. Jen Psaki showed a clip of Carlson criticizing and ridiculing Russia at the time. That was before the GOP and Trump became Russian sympathizers. https://www.msnbc.com/inside-with-jen-psaki/watch/watch-archival-footage-of-tucker-carlson-reveals-what-he-really-thinks-about-putin-20402080562
Pardon me for presuming. “…[H]e is incapable of explaining why he has invaded Ukraine in simple terms.” Oh, he’s plenty capable; he doesn’t feel the need to repeat. Putin considers the collapse of the Soviet Union to be the great geopolitical tragedy of the XX Century, and he considers it it destiny to undo the damage. He’ll do it gently by persuasion and meddling when the object is willing (Belarus) and – shall we say – less gently when they aren’t amenable.
Although off-topic, I consider the greatest tragedy of the last century the partition of India, which demonstrated the immense power of tribalism.
William, so many contenders for the worst geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. You say India’s partition, which caused 1 million death’s. Others might say World War 1, which totaled 40 million deaths, military and civilian. Or Workd War 2, which caused upwards of 75 million deaths. There are other candidates, such as the rise of totalitarian states (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot).
Tucker goes to Moscow to throw softball questions to indicted international war criminal Vladimir Putin. Wow.
Every day another low at the Trumpanzee Limbo Party.
One correction though, Diane. Carlson’s first name is properly spelled with an initial F.
Traitorous POS
What I got out of reading what John Sweeney had to say about Putin is how easy it would be to switch out Putin’s name for Trump, and all the descriptions would still fit, an almost perfect match. No wonder Trump worships Putin as if Putin were a god of some kind. Meeting Putin may have been the only time in Trump’s life that he met someone that thinks just like him, but in Russian.
Putin is much smarter than Trump. Bigly.
Haaaaaa!!!!!! Yes. Trump is Putin’s useful idiot.
I would add this three-point comment to posts about North Carolina and about right wing church politics. But, since there aren’t, my points are off topic.
(1) Lucky Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina- Catholic News Agency reported today that the North Carolina General Assembly gave the college $9 mil. from the assembly’s budget for the school’s performing arts center. The school’s fundraising goal of $100,000,000 has been reached two years ahead of schedule.
(2) Politico has a story about data collection involving people’s visits to Planned Parenthood clinics. The allegation is that the intelligence gathering data company violated privacy laws. The article references the investigation by Sen. Wyden (the privacy violation is assessed to be one of the most egregious in history) and the group, Wisconsin Right to Life.
(3) The National Catholic Register (Tim Busch) posted an article last year about a Wisconsin priest who told his parishioners to vote against the pro-choice candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Wisconsin will be one of the states that makes a difference in the 2024 presidential election.
Reminded me of starry eyed fellow travelers in the 30s.
Sweeney suggests he sees another world war. In his rear view mirror, he sees isolationism and loyalties blind to the evil that existed.
Perhaps the difference will be that rear view mirror. Perhaps the contest for the heart and soul of the country in which we are now engaged will teach some history.
I’m going off topic. Sorry. Jon Stewart rules!
Love that guy!
What I saw from the show was very funny in the vein of his best stuff in the 2000s, but I see he’s being scolded for “both-siderism”
I was rolling on the floor laughing.
“I see he’s being scolded for “both-siderism”??
Are you talking about the NYT review of the first episode written by James Poniewozik? I didn’t find it “scolding”. I thought it was quite informative and fair. It isn’t “scolding” to point out what’s true:
“Of course, the nine months until the election is, as Stewart pointed out, a very, very long time. Presumably he can’t fill it all with “The candidates are so old that” jokes. In his first show, he established that he didn’t want to be captive to his most vehement viewers’ expectations of what he should say. We’ll see going forward if he’s willing to tell them what he really thinks, even at the risk that they might agree with him.”
No, Jon Stewart was scolded by Mary Trump for treating Biden and her uncle as two equal candidates when she thinks her uncle is unhinged
Diane,
I saw that mention of Mary Trump. The NYT also made that same point, that Jon seemed to be doing a lot of both siderism in his first show.
For those who missed it.
If you watch this interview–a was able to find and listen to large parts of it–you will see just what Sweeney says about Putin. It’s on full display. This is a very sick, pathologically sick man whose major interest in any human interaction is twisting the knife into the other person. This amuses him. He is clearly psychopathic. I remember reading about an officer at Auschwitz who would have prisoners tied up and whipped and would stand watching and getting an erection as he watched. Sorry to be so graphic, but sometimes one needs to look at evil head on. Putin is that level evil. Even with a complete lackey and moron like Fucker Carlson, who is there to lick Putin’s boots and bathe in borrowed Putinesque glory, Putin cannot resist being cruel. It’s who he is. And worse than that. It’s what pleases him, what gets him off. Same, ofc, for his dog, Trump.
Like Stalin before him, Putin loves nothing more than watching people squirm. This brings him joy. He is an extraordinarily sick person. Evil.
Thank you, Mr. Sweeney. You nailed this creepy little international war criminal. He is a little knot of psychopathic nastiness.