Last week Tucker Carlson dropped his biggest interview yet — yes, bigger than Catturd. (Or this guy.) The former Fox News star scored a sit down with Vladimir Putin. It didn’t go as great as Carlson had wanted. At one point the Russian president even mocked him to his face. Nor did Tucker produce any real major insights into his guest, who hasn’t granted interviews with other, more serious journalists. As it happens, the chat caused one of those, Chris Wallace — a former Fox News colleague, and one who didn’t always approve of him — to let him have it.
“Tucker Carlson showed up in Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin. It turned out to be anything but an interview,” Wallace said on CNN Saturday, per Mediaite. “Putin droned on for two hours and seven minutes while Tucker sat there like an eager puppy. Occasionally, but rarely, he got in a question.
“But more telling than what Tucker asked is what he didn’t ask,” Wallace continued. “Nothing about why Putin invaded a sovereign country, nothing about targeting civilians, nothing about Russian war crimes. A reporter can ask Putin a tough question if he wants a real interview.”
Wallace said that asking Putin tough questions was never on his agenda anyway. He then went in for the kill:
“During the Cold War, gullible Westerners who spread Soviet propaganda were dismissed as ‘useful idiots.’ But calling Tucker that is unfair to useful idiots. He’s made a cynical decision to chase MAGA’s affection for dictators, and what better way to cash in than Putin’s Kremlin.
Wallace accused Carlson of “basically broadcasting fascist propaganda to credulous people in the West who are eager to buy into the mythology of Putin as a champion of the Nordic races against their enemies, and as an enemy of wokeness.” He then called the interview “one of the most disgraceful — to call it a journalistic performance is wrong because he’s not a journalist. I don’t even think it was a performance. It was just simply being a scribe to one of the most vicious dictators of our time.”
Just because Wallace and Tucker once worked together doesn’t mean they’re buds. Last year, during a sit down with Donald Trump, Carlson called Wallace a “bitchy little man.”
Tucker Carlson calls former colleague Chris Wallace a “bitchy little man.” pic.twitter.com/zk1GzGzMxf
— The Recount (@therecount) August 24, 2023
What’s worse: catty name-calling or accusing someone of “broadcasting fascist propaganda”? Thing is, Tucker probably doesn’t mind the latter.
(Via Mediaite)