Sacked star Tucker Carlson’s anticipated new gig in Russia

Controversial US shock jock Tucker Carlson has been spotted in Russia and his reason for being there could be explosive.

Sacked star Tucker Carlson’s anticipated new Vladimir Putin gig in Russia. Picture: Getty

ANALYSIS

Controversial US shock jock Tucker Carlson has been spotted at an elite opera house in Moscow. Speculation is rife that he’s there to interview President Vladimir Putin.

According to Russian police Telegram channel Mash, the former Fox News host arrived in Moscow last week. He’s since been seen rubbing shoulders with Russian oligarchs while attending a sparkling performance at the Bolshoi Theatre.

Last night, Russia’s Kremlin-controlled news agency Tass referenced a statement by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov. It said fans would have to “wait and see” whether or not a meeting between the two would eventuate.

Peskov has previously said Western media was not allowed to talk to Putin because “Western society has been stupefied by Russophobic propaganda”.

Yesterday, the Russian state-controlled RIA news agency repeated the Kremlin complaint that Putin had to tolerate “accusations” when dealing with foreign media.

“Maybe he’ll be more lucky with Tucker Carlson — it is said the TV host, who openly sympathises with Russia, has come here in the hope of talking to Putin,” said RIA on Telegram.

But pro-Kremlin blogger (any other type is attacked and arrested) Bezgranichny Analitik declared Carlson’s visit an “epochal event”.

“And be assured, this time, Putin will be heard by many in the West,” he added.

Double standards

“Democrats and their propagandists in the media are spasming at the prospect of Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin,” outspoken Georgia Republican Congressional Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted to social media at the weekend.

“We have a free press in this country, and it is people like Tucker Carlson, who we depend on to speak the truth!”

But not Russia. And it has the death toll to prove it.

Nevertheless, Carlson is an unabashed fan of the Russian autocrat.

“Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia?” Carlson said hours before Russia launched its failed “three-day” invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that’s still going on today.

“Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity?

“These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is: ‘No.’ Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that.”

Sacked news host Tucker Carlson has been spotted in Russia ahead of an anticipated interview with Vladimir Putin. Picture: Chip SOMODEVILLA / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP

Carlson complained in September last year that his efforts to contact Putin had been “blocked”.

“I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, and the US government stopped me,” Carlson complained to the Swiss Die Weltwoche magazine. “Well, you’re not allowed to hear Putin’s voice, ’coz why?” he grumbled.

But Putin’s press secretary says that is the Kremlin’s own policy.

“Firstly, when the public is in one way or another intoxicated by Russian-hateful propaganda, it is unlikely that anyone is now able to soberly perceive Putin’s analysis of the situation, his vision of the future, and so on,” Peskov wrote in September.

“We believe that there will definitely come a time when such an interview is required. But not at the moment. Whether Carlson will be among those who will be considered as such an interviewer, we’ll wait and see.”

‘Information war’

Carlson’s new social media streaming service Tucker Carlson Network is a regular discussion point for Russia’s Kremlin-controlled commentators.

The Kremlin regularly issues Russian media with instructions on “Victory in the Information War”.

“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson,” reads a leaked talking-points memo from March last year. “(Carlson) sharply criticises the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behaviour from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally.”

Tucker Carlson was the only journalist referenced in a memo given to Russian media by the Kremlin. Picture: Sergei GUNEYEV / POOL / AFP

No other Western commentator or journalist was referenced in the memo.

The same memo instructs Russian media to insist the invasion of Ukraine was “preventing the possibility of nuclear strikes” on Russian territory, that the invasion was proceeding “as planned”, and that Putin had taken the action to “protect Russians”.

These are also all regular Carlson comments. But not the final clause: the threat of “danger and possible legal consequences” for anyone who openly criticises the “special military operation”.

The chief of Russia’s state-controlled broadcaster RT, which has been blocked from rebroadcast in the West over false news reports, said Carlson initially requested to interview Putin in August. Its chief, Margarita Simonyan, added Carlson was “doing a great job”.

Pundits on parade

Carlson set the scene for his support of Putin in 2018: “There’s a lot of lying going on, and there’s a lot of propaganda, and there’s a lot of bad journalism, and there’s a lot of people with a vested interest in making us hate Russia. And so we should be sceptical.”

He later went on to accuse Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky of Putin’s own crimes: “In fact, Zelenskyy is far closer to Lenin than to George Washington. He is a dictator. He is a dangerous authoritarian who has used a hundred billion in US tax dollars to erect a one-party police state.”

Injecting confusion into Western democracies through troll farms and influencers has become a co-ordinated campaign over the past decade. In 2018, Australia made illegal “covert and deceptive or threatening activities by persons intending to interfere with Australia’s democratic systems and processes”. It’s also an offence to support “the intelligence activities of a foreign government”.

Now Norway is moving to criminalise promoting foreign-influence campaign “falsehoods”.

“How many agents of influence, established individuals who shape the public debate on behalf of Russia, China, or other hostile countries, are there?” asks Atlantic Council senior fellow Elisabeth Braw. “We don’t know. But we do know that agents of influence act with impunity because spreading another country’s talking points is not illegal.”