« A brief revolver primer | About that Kobe Bryant statue ... »
February 10, 2024

In Moscow, Tucker Carlson commits journalism

By Monica Showalter

So The Interview with Putin is out.

After the big hullabaloo from the left and the Washington swamp types about the all-powerful insidiousness of Russian "propaganda," plus a lot of Hitler stuff, Tucker Carlson calmly went to Moscow, met Russian President Vladimir Putin, and got a doozy of a taped two-hour, seven-minute interview, starting out with Putin's half-hour recital of a thousand years of Russian history.

You listen to it, and all you can do is mull it afterward -- it is so full of substance. Putin is a deep thinker, an intellectual of sorts, and a policy wonk, someone who wants "a discussion" and "not a talk show," as he put it, and he delivered on that.

His health seemed to have improved, he looked good, and he came off as alert and clear-eyed.

So as Joe Biden yawps his way through his presidency, mixing up the presidents of Mexico and Egypt, Putin calmly recites one thousand years of Russian history in immense detail, described off the top of his head, and then moves into deep discussion on Russo-American relations and all the twists and turns as well as standing issues that drive them.

Cutting to the chase, we learned that Putin invaded Ukraine based on a view that Ukraine was full of Nazis, but the trouble started with U.S.-driven coup activity with all the Ukrainian color revolutions overthrowing elected governments in the name of 'democracy,' the ones where Democrat State Department fixture Victoria Nuland passed out cookies and sandwiches to protestors. It was also the result of broken promises not to expand NATO or let Russia into it too.

Some of that seems fanciful -- the Nazi stuff was quite hard to believe given that Nazis are marginal losers on the fringes in both Russia and Ukraine, not a power center in either country, but the coup activity argument was fair enough, and the NATO expansion is worth considering.

He made some arguments I have heard from Russians before; namely, that the Russians wanted to work on missile defense systems together with NATO but were rebuffed, drawing Russia closer to Iran and China.

The last time he spoke to Biden was -- he was not sure -- and Tucker probed on that, learning basically that Putin didn't really want to discuss it. That Putin believed the CIA blew up the Nord Stream II pipeline. That Putin understood very well the role of the U.S. dollar as a source of U.S. influence. That Putin was not concerned about China's dominance of BRICS. That Putin could have better prospects with a president other than Biden but much of the U.S. is swamp-driven. That Putin believes, like China's leaders, that global development is inevitable and the U.S. will necessarily decline. "Look at Indonesia," he noted, saying that eventually they too will develop. That the U.S. adapts to the inevitable decline through sanctions and military force. That Putin had good relations with Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

Tucker also usefully asked Putin who he thinks is making the decisions in the U.S.

Putin's response: "I don't know. America is a complex country. It's conservative on one hand, it's changing on another." Putin was baffled at how U.S. elections were held, with some states able to disqualify a president from the ballot.

He wondered why the U.S. was so negative against Russia and mulled a lot about the lost opportunity of NATO missile defense. He mulled again on the "pressure, pressure, pressure" regarding Ukraine's entry into NATO. He saw the U.S. through the lens of what he sees in Russia -- a collection of fiefdoms — with production specialties created, quasi-state entities to create defense vs. China. He called it a mistake. 

Tucker asked him how a leader can be a Christian. Putin went into thinking about Dostoyevsky and the Russian soul. The West was practical, production-oriented, and scientific; the Orthodox East was spirituality-focused. Then Tucker asked him: if he saw God at work, could he see forces that are not human? Putin said 'no.'

He went on about Genghis Khan, the fall of the Roman Empire, and the rise and decline of empires, noting that it took five centuries for the Roman Empire to fall apart. But things are happening much faster now, he said. Tucker asked him when the AI empire started. He suggested reaching an agreement with Elon Musk.

As an important coda to the interview, Tucker asked about detained Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich, whom he said was obviously not a spy and just "a kid." Putin demurred on releasing him, but Tucker bit down and kept at him for a release, drawing out at least some openness to it.

At the interview's end, Putin didn't want to get out of there -- he wanted to re-mull and re-expound on some of his points, laying out his thoughts again.

It was interesting and revealing because there was so much of it. It was like he enjoyed sorting his thoughts out for Tucker. There were only two areas where one felt he was trying to propagandize the U.S.: on energy and on the justification for the Ukraine war. The rest seemed to be pretty sincere. 

Russian former YUKOS billionaire and imprisoned dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky laid out downright errors in Putin's statements for perspective, most of which appear correct, but some disputable:

Meanwhile, in the wake of the interview, there was some reporting from Kremlin sources out on Twitter that Putin was unhappy with the interview, which, if so, it would be interesting because it would suggest that Putin had revealed too much of his own self, his own internal thinking, more than he'd have liked to Tucker, or U.S. intelligence to know. It might mean he had made himself intellectually naked, so to speak, and then regretted it.

In short, that's good journalism. 

Far from being obsequious or allowing propaganda, it was good journalism, telling us something we didn't know instead of hammering away on "talking points" and "narratives," which is what journalists ought to be doing more of.

Sure, it came in a roundabout way and resulted in no secrets or surprises revealed. But through two hours of letting Putin talk himself out it was immensely revealing in a unique way as to what the U.S. is up against, and it helps us all to hear that different point of view.

Well done, Tucker.

Image: Twitter screen shot

If you experience technical problems, please write to helpdesk@americanthinker.com