Carlson interviews Putin
It was refreshing to see a journalist at work not wanting to score personal points but actually give his subject a chance to answer questions fully. Putin dispelled all the propaganda aimed at him.
Having watched Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin in Russian and English and read the complete transcript, I waited for America’s talking heads to give their sage response before my commenting. Of course, none of them had the courage to engage the content of the interview, except when they were misrepresenting either participant’s comments, and all launched petty attacks on Tucker in an orgasmic explosion of celebrity envy. Any one of them could have had the interview if their record of objectivity or fairness were intact. All of them would have asked those self-aggrandizing questions to demonstrate the fearlessness of their journalism. In happier times he could sit down with Meaghan Kelly or Christian Amanpour, but this was not the time to converse with administration mouthpieces.
Most of Tucker’s professional colleagues prefaced their comments by saying he “is not a journalist.” Every job Tucker has had since leaving college in 1991, Nassr been in media, writing or speaking. In other words, he was involved in the public output of media organizations, not working in the accounting department or on latrine duty. Over 40 years in journalism and with a more recognizable name than most who attack him.
The first thing Putin asked, “Is this going to be a show or a serious conversation?” As soon as Tucker opted for “serious” he temporarily ceded control of the interview to Putin, who then launched into a 28-minute discourse on the history of Russia and just where Ukraine fit in. To most Americans with a 5-minute attention span, this might have been boring. But Putin was talking to the smart ones, all the while impressing the rest with his command of language and narrative, much like Obama and Clinton, two Democratic darlings.
Most savvy Americans will dismiss the criticism as the “expected” reaction. Attributing lies to the opposition is standard when your truths don’t hold up. Typically the critics mine the speech for fairly small transgressions which are then amplified to discredit the whole.
Putin supporters on line reluctantly corrected some historical facts, but even the corrected history leads to the same conclusion - the Ukraine was always a subordinate ethnic group or borderland tribe (never a state) while Russian statehood has long been a positive factor in European history and politics, as Napoleon and Hitler found out. The cradles of two world wars were in the Balkans where Slavic nationalists and anarchists sought independence from larger European powers - and still goes on today in Serbia and Kosovo.
Despite the nit-picking critics, Putin came across as a person with deep motivations rooted in history - thereby countering the narrative that Putin was just a power hungry dictator trying to resurrect the old Soviet state. In fact, before invading Ukraine, he sought security guarantees from NATO that included the neutrality of Ukraine, which was Russia’s largest trading partner. Not even given the courtesy of a reply, Putin acted to make his own guarantee.
Putin came across as logical and well-spoken, in direct contrast to the Western narrative about his being the “beast of the east.” We in the West are used to the jingoistic sayings of our politicians who only speak the language of the bumper sticker.
So the main result of this interview is that Putin’s brand got its first real showing and it elevated him above most of his opposition as a worthy personality.
Even before the interview we knew that Tucker Carlson would be accused of throwing “soft balls” to Putin. The so-called “real journalists” would have asked Putin questions about atrocities and such. We don’t know what was in Tuckers list of unasked questions. Being aware of Putin’s utter competence and confidence, it is unlikely there were any forbidden topics. I hope Tucker releases those questions, and let’s hope that he gets another chance for a more congenial conversation, as when Oliver Stone did his documentary on Putin and Russia.
I wanted to close by cherry-picking the interview for some revealing quotes, but I just discovered Putin does not speak in “sound bites.”
To be intellectually honest, I suggest that you take neither mine nor the ubiquitous American critics’ word for this and read the interview transcript linked as follows:
https://www.miragenews.com/full-text-transcript-of-tucker-carlson-putin-1171489/
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Carlson’s comments post-interview
Tucker Carlson reveals what ‘radicalized’ him.
Following his two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, US journalist Tucker Carlson opened up about his experience at the World Government Summit in Dubai.
In an hour-long interview with TV presenter Emad Eldin Adeeb, Carlson addressed why the conversation with Putin did not touch on certain topics, how the US political establishment had reacted to it, and why Washington has failed to understand Moscow, among other things.
Putin the diplomat
Carlson claimed that he had an off-the-record conversation with Putin after their interview, but would not reveal what was discussed, however.
Carlson did say that Putin seemed willing to negotiate with the West about both the end of the Ukraine conflict and a new balance of power in the world. Diplomacy is the art of compromise, and almost everyone “other than maybe the United States during the unipolar period” understands this, Carlson said. But while Putin wants the conflict to end, his position will only harden the longer it goes on, he added.
NATO and Russia
One of the major revelations in the interview for Carlson was that Russia had asked to join NATO – and while then-US President Bill Clinton seemed receptive, his aides pushed against the idea and it ultimately failed.
Since the entire point of NATO was to keep the Soviet Union out of Western Europe, Carlson said in Dubai, “if the Russians ask to join the alliance, that would suggest you have solved the problem and you can move on to do something constructive with your life. But we refused.”
“Go sit in the sauna for an hour and think about what that means,” he added.
The problem with Western politicians
Politicians in the West aren’t setting themselves “achievable” goals, Carlson has argued.
“I have heard personally US government officials say well we just have to return Crimea to Ukraine,” he said. “That’s not going to happen, short of a nuclear war. That’s insane, actually.”
Even bringing up this kind of idea “shows you are a child, you don’t understand the area at all, and you have no real sense of what’s possible,” the journalist concluded.
It’s always Munich 1938
According to Carlson, one of the biggest issues in the US and the West in general is the tendency to reduce everything to the 1938 Munich conference, at which Britain and France sought to “appease” Nazi Germany by giving it a portion of Czechoslovakia.
“The American policymaker historical template is tiny – in fact there’s only one – and it’s a 2-year period in the late 1930s, and everything is based on that understanding of history and human nature. That’s insane,” Carlson said.
How Moscow ‘radicalized’ him
Carlson pointed out that he’s 54 and grew up in an America that had nice, safe and beautiful cities, “and we no longer have them.”
It was “radicalizing” to see Moscow “cleaner, safer and prettier” than American cities, he said, or be reminded of that in Dubai and Abu Dhabi – while in the US, one can’t ride the subway in New York City because it’s dirty and unsafe.
“That’s a voluntary choice,” he said. “You don’t have to have crime, actually.”
Reacting to the backlash
Asked why he hadn’t raised certain topics with Putin, Carlson said he wanted to do the interview because he was interested in how the Russian leader saw the world – and not to inject himself into the discussion.
Most journalists who interview leaders the US dislikes tend to make it about themselves, Carlson added, and since he only cared about the approval of his wife and their children, he didn’t need to virtue-signal.
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Asked to comment on former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton calling him a “useful idiot” for Russia, Carlson laughed it off.
“She’s a child, I don’t listen to her,” he said. “How’s Libya doing?”
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