Carlson's interview of Putin a piece of propaganda

Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who was dropped by the network in April 2023 and has since started a new show airing directly on the X platform, formerly Twitter, has scored a big coup by going to Russia to interview that country’s authoritarian ruler, Vladimir Putin. The intense backlash against Carlson’s Putin interview, which aired Thursday evening, has prompted Carlson’s defenders to accuse his detractors of being opposed to the free press: Whatever one thinks of Putin, they say, American journalists have always interviewed even the worst and most hostile of dictators.

Indeed, “60 Minutes’” host Mike Wallace interviewed Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini shortly after Iran’s seizure of American hostages in 1979. No serious person disputes Carlson’s right to air an interview with Putin. The question is whether he’s acting as a journalist or a propagandist.

Carlson, who over the years has drifted from being a moderate libertarian/conservative to a radical populist and nationalist, has made no secret of his sympathy for Putin and antipathy for Ukraine. In 2019, he said “we should probably take the side of Russia if we have to choose.” He has accused Democrats of whipping up hatred toward Russia and Putin. He has echoed Kremlin claims that the invasion of Ukraine was motivated by security concerns and flogged conspiracy theories about sinister American “biolabs” in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Carlson has also called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” and a “dangerous authoritarian” — because, after the Russian invasion, Zelenskyy banned pro-Kremlin political parties and a Moscow-controlled branch of the Orthodox Christian Church.

No wonder the Soviet propaganda machine adores Carlson.

Of course, it’s fine for an American journalist to interview a hostile foreign leader. The problem is that Carlson and his supporters have been touting his interview as bringing American audiences “the truth” and wresting the narrative away from the “fake news media.” The implication was that whatever the Kremlin dictator would be dishing out is “truth.”

In a video explaining why he was going to interview Putin, Carlson claimed that no Western journalists had “bothered” to interview him since the start of the war — eliciting a rebuttal from a Kremlin spokesman, who said that other interview requests from Western media had been turned down. The one from Carlson was approved, the spokesman said, because his position “differs from the rest” of the “Anglo-Saxon media.” You don’t say.

No less absurdly, Carlson claims that Americans haven’t been given a chance to hear Putin’s viewpoint — as if his statements hadn’t been aired on television and published in English translation.

The interview did not start auspiciously, as Carlson allowed Putin to recite unchallenged his lengthy talking points about Russian claims on Ukrainian territories and his grievances against the West, with Carlson assuring his viewers in the introduction that he believes Putin is “sincere.”

It’s doubtful that the Carlson interview will move the needle on American attitudes toward the Putin regime. It will probably be a case of preaching to the converted — the six or seven percent of Americans who say they trust Putin. But the Kremlin will likely get some domestic propaganda mileage out of the interview, touting it as validation by a Western journalist. In that sense, Carlson is certainly making himself a willing tool of Putin’s propaganda.

That doesn’t mean Carlson's freedom of speech should be curbed.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.