After Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, Tucker Carlson remarked, “It may be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is: ‘No.’ Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that.”

Well, no, come to think of it, Putin has never called me a racist or threatened to get me fired, but then again, neither did Pol Pot, Idi Amin, or Osama Bin Laden.

I wonder, did Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky ever call Tucker a racist or try to get him fired?  What in the hell is Carlson’s point? He doesn’t hate Putin because Putin has never personally wronged him, never had any of his personal friends or family members flung from a five-story hotel window? 

If that’s the case, slap his photo next to “Solipsistic” in dictionaries. 

If you’re just emerging from a coma and haven’t heard, Tucker travelled to Russia last week to interview Putin and was treated rather rudely, forced to wait for two hours in an uncomfortable chair, and once the beady-eyed ex-KGB head finally arrived, he mocked Tucker’s failed attempt to join the CIA, but what is probably worse, subjected him to a rambling arcane lecture on, “the concept of God, the Russian soul, and what Putin thought of U.S. President Joe Biden.”^[1]

[cue Mr. Kurtz: “the horror! the horror!”]

Yeah, but Tucker did get attention, not something he’s been getting much of lately on his streaming service, the Tucker Carlson Network. However, Putin remarked after the event that he had found the interview disappointing. “To be honest,” Putin said, “I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions. I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way.” 

[whomp whomp]

After the interview, Carlson bopped around Moscow marveling over how it was superior to cities in the US. After purchasing $100 of groceries that would cost $400 at Harris Teeter, he ate at a fast food restaurant that had been a Macdonald’s before the invasion. He lauded both the quality of the cheeseburgers, fries, and chocolate cake he consumed and their low cost, “647 rubles [or] $7.05,” which is quite a bargain, unless you consider that the average annual salary in Russia is 14,771 in US dollars and factor in the strength of the dollar versus the weakness of the ruble.

Now, I’m not into conspiracy theories, not going to claim that Tucker’s visit and Trump’s invitation for Russia to invade NATO are linked to dissident Aleksei Navalny’s murder; however, the timing in a PR sense is not great for either Trump or Carlson.

Anyway, Carlson had already addressed the question of Putin’s ruthlessness before the murder when asked why he hadn’t broached the subject of Navalny’s imprisonment during the interview: 

“I didn’t talk about the things that every media outlet talks about because those are covered, and I have spent my life talking to people who run countries, in various countries, and have concluded the following: That every leader kills people, including my leader. Leadership requires killing people. That is why I wouldn’t want to be a leader.”

It’s a brutal job, but somebody’s got to do it.

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^[1] Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, The New Republic.