In terms of maligning Tucker, it would have been hard to beat former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who in a Daily Mail op-ed, criticized Carlson’s interviewing Putin, saying he was “fawning, guffawing” and had “slack-jawed happiness at having a ‘scoop.’” The former prime minister said Tucker “betrayed” viewers around the world.
“He didn’t ask tough questions. He didn’t ask Putin why even now he is using the most brutal means of modern warfare to maim and murder innocent Ukrainian civilians,” Johnson wrote.
Instead, Carlson acted like a fan of Putin and “boneheadedly” accepted Putin’s “mixture of semi-masticated Wikipedia and outright falsehood,” Johnson argued.
Notice, however, that the former Prime Minister did not dispute Putin’s claim that it was he – Boris Johnson – who talked the Ukrainians out of peace during talks at Istanbul.
We have to say we were somewhat disappointed too, as we were looking for something from Putin to show us what an ogre he is or some penetrating and incisive questioning from Tucker, and the interview was short on both.
Tucker’s best moments were when he pressed Putin on releasing Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich who has been unjustly detained in Russia since March 2023 on an espionage allegation that he, the Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny.
While Joe Biden claims to have been “personally engaged” in getting Mr. Gershkovich and Marine Corps veteran Paul Whelan repatriated, it appears Tucker got more out of Putin about what it will take to get them back than Biden and the State Department have.
What Putin said he wanted (or implied might be a better term) was the return of Russian special operator Vadim Krasikov, now serving a life sentence in Germany for gunning down a Chechen émigré in a Berlin park in 2019. Putin called Krasikov, whom he didn’t refer to by name, a Russian patriot.
All that was to the good in opening a more public dialogue on getting the Americans back home, but much of the rest of Putin’s remarks were simply vintage Putin Eurasianist National Bolshevism-inspired longing for a reconstituted empire that is never going to be reestablished.
The problem was that Tucker didn’t appear to have the background to follow-up and probe Putin’s version of history to actually engage in an intellectual joust with Putin and challenge him or probe deeper into where the logic of his claims leads.
But to some extent Tucker can be excused for being ignorant of Eurasianist National Bolshevism and its appeal to many Russians.
Almost all the books on the subject as is its principal proponent – Putin’s ideological mentor Aleksandr Dugin – have been sanctioned and banned in the West.
It would have been nice if Tucker had been able to probe Putin on his adherence to Dugin’s vision of an eventual war with the United States to liberate the world from Western “bourgeois” capitalism. And how, in Dugin’s view, Russia’s eventual victory over the United States and the capitalist system will also liberate ordinary Americans from their greedy Wall Street overlords.
Likewise, it would have been interesting for Tucker to ask Putin about his alliances with Iran and Communist China, and his desire for Russia to be honored, feared and powerful, and for his newly renewed Russia to lead what amounts to a jihad against America and the West.
But we only got glimpses of that from Putin’s side as he reiterated his now somewhat tired claims about the demise of the Soviet Union being the greatest disaster of the 20th century and the not unreasonable, but disputed position that United States and NATO went back on their word not to encroach on Russia’s near-abroad.
Fortunately, unlike the foreign policy and media establishment’s successful effort to ban and sanction Aleksandr Dugin and the study of Eurasianist National Bolshevism, we got to see Tucker’s interview with Putin, so we get to make up our own minds about it.
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Eurasianist National Bolshevism