The Ukrainian government has branded Tucker Carlson a “clown” and told him to check his facts after he launched a pro-Kremlin rant on his first Twitter show.
The former Fox News host told viewers that a “fair person would conclude” that Ukraine destroyed the Nova Kakhovka damn which collapsed and caused massive flooding in the country.
Carlson, a popular voice for the Kremlin, added that the dam was “effectively Russian” and that the damage “hurts Russia” more than Ukraine.
“The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian-controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea, which has been for the last 240 years home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” said Carlson.
“So really, once the facts start coming in, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam, and a fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline last fall.”
Both Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for the destruction of the dam, which lies within Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine and supplies water to a large area of the country. Western intelligence agencies have said they are not sure who was responsible.
Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security slammed Carlson on Twitter on Thursday, using a clown emoji.
They also posted an edited picture of Carlson with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, calling him an “agent of Putin.”
Ep. 1 pic.twitter.com/O7CdPjF830
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 6, 2023
“Tucker Carlson, a TV presenter who was fired from Fox News, ‘explains’ why Ukraine blew up the Kakhovka HPP. Let’s break down his arguments,” the government agency tweeted.
“1. The explosion has led to an environmental disaster on the territory of Ukraine,” they continued.
🤡 Tucker Carlson, a TV presenter who was fired from Fox News, “explains” why Ukraine blew up the Kakhovka HPP. Let's break down his arguments 🧵 pic.twitter.com/kaP2rLggBR
— SPRAVDI — Stratcom Centre (@StratcomCentre) June 7, 2023
“2. The flooding of the territory complicates Ukraine’s offensive in the South and allows the Russians to release at least some of the forces they have been keeping on this part of the frontline.
“3. It is not the first time that the Russians have resorted to the scorched earth tactic in an attempt to inflict as much damage as possible on Ukraine.”
🤡 Tucker Carlson, a TV presenter who was fired from Fox News, “explains” why Ukraine blew up the Kakhovka HPP. Let's break down his arguments 🧵 pic.twitter.com/kaP2rLggBR
— SPRAVDI — Stratcom Centre (@StratcomCentre) June 7, 2023
The agency also accused Carlson of using an edited video of US Senator Lindsey Graham meeting Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.
In the doctored video Mr Graham seemingly says Russians are dying followed by “This is the best thing we’ve ever spent money on.”
“Graham’s statements about the deaths of Russians and the spending of American money do not follow each other. The unedited version of this conversation was made public. But Tucker Carlson ignored it,” the agency added.
Elsewhere in his new show on Twitter, Carlson described Ukraine’s Jewish leader Zelensky as “sweaty and rat-like”, “a persecutor of Christians”, and in bed with American investment bankers.
“No one who’s paid to cover these things seem to entertain even the possibility it could have been Ukrainians who did it. No chance of that,” Carlson said of the dam incident, engaging in his trademark deadpan sarcasim.
“Ukraine, as you may have heard, is led by a man called Zelensky. We can say for a dead certain fact that he was not involved. He couldn’t have been; Zelensky is too decent for terrorism.
“Now you see him on television, and it’s true you might form a different impression. Sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of [US investment giant] BlackRock.”
“But don’t believe your own eyes. Actually, Mr Zelensky is a very good man... of all the people in the world, our shifty, dead-eyed Ukrainian friend in the tracksuit is uniquely incapable of blowing up a damn. He’s literally a living saint, a man in whom there is no sin.”
He went on to cite numerous other examples where, he claimed, the US media had ignored important stories as part of an effort to systematically deceive the American people.
“What’s happened to the hundreds of billions of US dollars we’ve sent to Ukraine? No clue,” he said. “Who organised those Black Lives Matter riots three years ago? No one’s gotten to the bottom of that. What exactly happened on 9/11? Well, it’s still classified.”
He then talked about bombshell claims from a US military intelligence veteran named David Grusch that the US government has recovered pieces of spacecraft built by “non-human species”, as well as the bodies of alien pilots.
Although the story was widely covered by US media outlets, Carlson focused on the fact that neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post had reported on it, and treated Mr Grusch’s claims as definitively true.
“That’s what the former Intel officer revealed, and it was clear he was telling the truth,” Mr Carlson said. “In other words, UFOs are actually real, and apparently so is extraterrestrial life.
“Now, in a normal country, this news would qualify as a bombshell the story of the millennium. But in our country, it doesn’t.”
Carlson was removed from his nightly show on Fox News where he had been the right-wing broadcaster’s provocatuer-in-chief for years. His dismissal came in the wake of the Dominion scandal, which saw Fox pay out $787m for deliberately spreading Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims that he had been cheated out of victory in the 2020 election.
