Putin’s Stooge
By 
I was going to write “cat’s paw,” but Tucker is fully aware that he’s dictatorwashing here:
As Russian state television propagandists salivated over Tucker Carlson’s interview with President Vladimir Putin, the first of Carlson’s falsehoods about his visit to Moscow was punctured, fittingly enough, by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who presumably helped arrange the whole strange venture.
Carlson, the conservative former Fox News host with a history of airing bogus “news,” claimed — falsely — that prominent U.S. newspapers and television outlets had refused to interview Putin since his invasion of Ukraine and were ignoring Russia’s perspective. Carlson labeled Western media as “corrupt” and accused them of lies on Tuesday in a video confirming that he was in Moscow for a Q&A with the president.
“Mr. Carlson is wrong,” Peskov said during his daily briefing for reporters. “We receive many requests for interviews with the president.”
Peskov conceded that the Kremlin routinely blocked media interview requests from large Western outlets, but he said it gave Carlson the nod because “his position is different” from the major “Anglo-Saxon media.” (Anglo-Saxon is a common blanket jab at the West even when mostly Americans are involved.)
Carlson’s assertion was astonishing, given that two journalists who are U.S. citizens are now jailed in Russia: Evan Gershkovich, of the Wall Street Journal, who was accused of espionage and seized by Federal Security Service agents last year during a reporting trip to Yekaterinburg, and Alsu Kurmasheva, of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, who has dual U.S. and Russian citizenship and who was arrested in October while visiting Russia from Prague, where she had been living.
It’s not a coincidence that the one policy ask the House Republican conference seems steadfast on is their desire to withdraw aid from Ukraine to allow their ally Putin to conquer as much territory as possible.
.@juliaioffe on Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin in Russia: “What's really shocking is the way he just walks right into Moscow and presents himself on a silver platter to the Kremlin. Doing the Kremlin’s job of misinforming, disinforming the American population.” pic.twitter.com/1ySqKpNH2I— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) February 7, 2024