Putin walks away with propaganda victory after Tucker Carlson’s softball interview
Analysis by Oliver Darcy, CNN
4 minute read
Updated 10:40 PM EST, Thu February 8, 2024
02:30
Editor’s Note: A
version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources”
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landscape here.
CNN —
It’s evident
now why Vladimir Putin granted an interview to Tucker Carlson.
Over the
course of the more than two-hour sit-down, the former Fox News host
turned online commentator largely refrained from challenging the Russian
authoritarian, whose brutal war on Ukraine has led to the needless deaths of
hundreds of thousands of people. Those expecting a hard-hitting face-off will
have surely walked away sorely disappointed by the long-winded and rambling
interview, in which Tucker himself at times appeared lost.
Instead of
pressing Putin on the many topics at hand, including credible accusations
Russia has committed war crimes and the imprisonment of opposition
leader Alexei Navalny, Carlson allowed the autocrat a free lane to
manipulate the public and tell his version of history, no
matter how deceptive it may have been. At times, between the airing of
grievances, Putin appeared to school Carlson on historical events as the host
looked on in bewilderment. Or to put it more plainly, Carlson provided Putin a
platform to spread his propaganda to a global audience with little to no
scrutiny of his claims.
“What you
see from watching the first 45 minutes of this, is that this is President
Putin’s platform,” Clarissa Ward, CNN’s chief international
correspondent, remarked, adding that it was “clear from the very beginning” of
the interview that Carlson did “not have control.”
In some
cases, Carlson even fed into Putin’s narratives. For instance, Putin advanced
an absurd deep state-style conspiracy theory that the U.S. government is not
controlled by its elected leaders but by unelected powers at the Central
Intelligence Agency who direct the president like a puppet from the shadows.
“So, twice
you’ve described US presidents making decisions and then being undercut by
their agency heads,” Carlson said after Putin made the assertion, earnestly
summing up the Russian leader’s mendacious narrative. “So it sounds like you’re
describing a system that’s not run by the people who are elected, in your
telling?”
“That’s
right, that’s right,” Putin replied.
Carlson
never followed up to challenge the absurdity.
It was a
massive propaganda victory for Putin, who can — and will – now
twist the encounter for his own ends. If there was any doubt that Putin did not
view the sit-down with Carlson as a big win, a glance at how his own state-run
media covered the affair should erase it. Immediately after Carlson published
the chat online, Putin’s mouthpieces rushed to amplify it.
TASS featured
the sit-down as the top story on its homepage, amplifying Putin’s claim that
Ukraine is an “artificial state” and devoting an entire section of its website
to special coverage of the interview. RT, the English-language broadcaster
now exiled from much of the Western world, aired significant swaths of the
interview on its air.
“VLADIMIR
PUTIN’S INTERVIEW GAINS OVER 20 MILLION VIEWERS IN FIRST TWO HOURS,” RT boasted
in one on-screen graphic.
None of this
should come as any surprise.
While
Carlson was once a critic of the Russian government, in recent years he has
been far more sympathetic to the Putin-led state, dragging
the GOP with him. Carlson’s commentary on Russia’s brutal war on
Ukraine has been anything but favorable toward Kiev, with the right-wing
extremist even likening Volodymyr Zelensky to vermin last year.
Which is
precisely why Putin agreed to the interview with Carlson, while actual
journalists who would have pressed the Russian leader on a range of critical
issues, have been denied access for years. You don’t have to take
our word for it, either. Putin’s own spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told
reporters this week that Carlson was selected because he “has a position that
is different from the rest” of Western media.
There was
one moment, however, in which Carlson did gently press Putin. At the end of the
interview, Carlson asked Putin if he would be “willing to release” Evan
Gershkovich, the imprisoned reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Putin
declined to release Gershkovich now, to which Carlson said, “He’s a kid, and
maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a super spy and
everybody knows that.”
While
Carlson did advocate for the immediate release of Gershkovich, his remark did
not go over well at The Journal. Ted Mann, a reporter at the newspaper,
wrote on X that it was “disgraceful of Carlson to suggest Evan was ‘breaking
[their] law.’”
“He wasn’t,”
Mann added. “Carlson knows that. Evan is a law-abiding, decent reporter being
held hostage for geopolitical leverage. He should be released immediately.”
The Journal
also released a statement following the interview.
“Evan is a
journalist, and journalism is not a crime. Any portrayal to the contrary is
total fiction,” the newspaper said. “Evan was unjustly arrested and has been
wrongfully detained by Russia for nearly a year for doing his job, and we
continue to demand his immediate release.”
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