The far-right pundit and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson confirmed on Tuesday he was in Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin, and said he would air his conversation with Russia’s president to counter what he described as pro-Ukraine “fawning pep sessions” by western media covering the war.
Speculation had been growing for days that Carlson, who was dumped by Fox last year for “getting too big for his boots”, had traveled to the Russian capital to meet Putin, whose reasons for invading Ukraine he says have a right to be heard by the American public.
But his visit, which reportedly has included visits to the Bolshoi ballet and dining in fine restaurants, has drawn accusations he is acting as a propaganda tool for Putin, whom he has frequently defended. Russian media, meanwhile, have hailed Carlson as a celebrity “who speaks the truth”.
In a post to X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday afternoon, Carlson portrayed the upcoming interview as a chance for the American public to see the “truth” of the Ukraine war against a backdrop of what he says, without any evidence, are a succession of lies told by western media outlets.
“Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now,” Carlson said in the four-minute video recorded in Moscow and trailing the interview, which he says will be on his own website and posted “uncensored” by the X owner, Elon Musk, at an unspecified time.
Why I'm interviewing Vladimir Putin. pic.twitter.com/hqvXUZqvHX
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 6, 2024
“You’ve never heard his voice. That’s wrong. Americans have a right to know all we can about a war they’re implicated in, and we have the right to tell them about it,” he continued.
“Western governments by contrast will certainly do their best to censor this video. They are afraid of information they can’t control.”
Carlson, whose downfall at Fox followed his on-air amplification of Donald Trump’s lies that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent, untruths that ultimately cost Fox $787.5m in a defamation lawsuit brought by the Dominion Voting Systems company, also claimed Americans were “uninformed” about the effects of the war, and had “no real idea of what’s happening in this region”.
Since leaving Fox, Carlson has taken to broadcasting on X, where his shows – which have included speculation about UFOs among other topics – are often conspiracy-laced and have included segments on disgraced figures like Russell Brand and Andrew Tate.
Even during his prime-time Fox News years, Carlson become notorious for extremist and bigoted language, especially around the issue of immigration.
In the post on X, Carlson attacked Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and implied that only he would be telling the truth about the war.
“The populations of the English-speaking countries seem mostly unaware. Their media outlets are corrupt. They lie to the readers and viewers,” he said.
“The interviews [Zelenskiy has] done in the US are not traditional interviews, they are fawning pep sessions specifically designed to amplify Zelenskiy’s demands that the US enter more deeply into a war in eastern Europe and pay for it.
“That is not journalism. It is government propaganda of the ugliest kind,” he added.
