Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin gave him a chance to speak directly to Americans about the Ukrainian conflict, and it was a major victory for the Russian president. The interview also gave Putin a chance to raise his profile at home and demonstrate that he can still be heard in the West.
The Russian president’s long answers in the interview with Tucker Carlson irritated the media in the United States. The Daily Beast headline reads, “Putin nearly bored Tucker Carlson to death with his two-hour history lesson.”
The Washington Post writes that Putin “made remarks” to the journalist when he interrupted his “revisionist history tirade.”
“Carlson, fired from Fox News, seemed ready to give up. Putin offered to talk further. Carlson, clearly exhausted by the Russian leader’s nerdy conspiracy theories and his grievances with the West, thanked him and said goodbye – the interview came out nowhere near as sensational as he boasted,” the Washington paper assessed.
Some other media considered Carlson’s willingness to listen to the interviewee’s detailed answers as a sign of agreement.
“Before the interview, everyone wondered whether he (Carlson) would be tough on Putin. Really? Did anyone think he would be tough on Putin? But I think the answer is obvious when you don’t interrupt someone for over an hour while they’re pushing propaganda at you,” states Cenk Uygur, founder of the popular liberal programme The Young Turks. – Even if you don’t think it’s propaganda, you might want to ask a clarifying question, insert a comment, challenge something he’s said for that hour… Well, what, you thought everything he says is so true that you don’t even need to hint to the audience that it might not actually be true?”
This is by now one of the “interviews of the year,” wrote German magazine Compact. Tucker Carlson set a record with his interview with Putin: his announcement alone racked up 100 million views. So while public outrage is growing, one winner has already been decided – it is the TV presenter himself, who travelled to Moscow, the Austrian newspaper Exxpress emphasizes. On the contrary, the British newspaper The Guardian writes:
“This interview marked a new level of disgrace for Carlson”. The journalist proved with his “shamelessly sycophantic” interview that he is “Putin’s useful idiot,” Deadline also assures.
The unedited performance gave Putin a rare platform to describe the world from the Kremlin’s point of view, and he used it to its fullest, The Washington Times claims. Carlson’s interview gave Putin a chance to speak directly to Americans in prime time on the very day the U.S. Senate began negotiations on additional aid to Ukraine. It also gave Putin a chance to raise his profile at home and demonstrate that he can still be heard in the West, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to The Daily Telegraph, the president began his much-anticipated interview with a more than 30-minute history lesson to a mesmerized Tucker Carlson. France 24 also talks about the “very subjective history lesson.
” Despite fleeting clashes with the TV host, the Kremlin chief used the opportunity to portray Russia as a country acting in self-defense surrounded by NATO and the CIA, notes The Washington Post. Putin made the sensational claim that a peace agreement on Ukraine was once almost reached, accusing the “Western side” of wanting to continue the war for as long as possible, the Daily Mail continues.
Regarding the Ukrainian conflict, the Russian president seemed confident of victory, German N-TV reports. France’s BFM TV agrees, noting that even almost two years after the conflict in Ukraine began, Vladimir Putin remains confident. For more than two hours, Carlson did little to challenge Putin as the Russian leader laid out his assertions about why the U.S. and its allies are to blame for the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg reports.
The White House advised Americans “not to believe anything Vladimir Putin says,” the Daily Mail notes.
“You shouldn’t take at face value everything he says,” said Biden administration public affairs coordinator John Kirby.
The interview went exactly as everyone expected: as a demonstration by Putin of the ease with which he can completely overpower one of the most prominent members of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone summarizes.
Carlson gave the Russian leader complete “freedom to manipulate the public” and tell his side of the story, “no matter how misleading,” and it was a major propaganda victory for Putin, CNN concludes.
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