Carlson, that dumb Tucker

America’s answer to our own dear Peter Hitchens has arrived in Moscow, where it’s widely believed he’ll be granted an interview with Putin.

That little junket has drawn a great deal of criticism, which galvanised Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene into springing to Carlson’s defence. “We have a free press in this country and it’s people like Tucker Carlson who we depend on to speak the truth,” she said.

What if we replaced “to speak the truth” with “to provide a mouthpiece for enemy propaganda?” Would Mrs Greene still think the sentence made perfect sense? I bet she wouldn’t.

Therefore she must believe that Carlson’s interview with Putin will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I, on the other hand, am certain that Carlson will turn his little tête–à–tête into a weapon for Putin to use in his hybrid war on the West. Propaganda is as essential a component of that hybrid as warfare, sabotage, terrorism and assassinations, all of them arrows from Putin’s quiver.

Now, neither Mrs Greene nor I possess prophetic powers. We don’t know for sure what Carlson’s interview with Putin could be like.

All we have to go by is history, the only possible, if not always reliable, predictor of the future. Both Mrs Greene and I know how Carlson has covered Putin’s Russia in the past. We just draw different conclusions from this knowledge.

She believes that the supposedly upcoming interview will open millions of American eyes to the truth. I, on the other hand, have no doubt that the KGB colonel will use Carlson either as a useful idiot or a knowing agent to dupe the West into cutting assistance to the Ukraine.

I don’t know what it is about Carlson’s past that convinces Mrs Greene he is likely to speak the truth on this subject. However, I know exactly what the basis for my judgement is. And, unlike her, I’m happy to share my sources with you.

So here are a few ‘truths’ Carlson has vouchsafed his devoted viewers since the start of Russian aggression on the Ukraine in 2014:

“Why is Vladimir Putin such a bad guy? He’s not Saddam Hussein, he’s not Adolf Hitler, he’s not a danger to the United States.”

“The Left sees Putin behind every problem, and they’re trying to convince us to see him too. They want to drum up a new Cold War, and you’re the target.”

“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.”

“We should probably take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine.”

“Putin, for all his faults, does not hate America as much as [American liberals] do.”

“The Cold War ended a long time ago. The Soviet Union is gone. Russia is not our enemy. It’s just not.”

All the following statements have been uttered immediately before and after the full-scale Russian aggression:

“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.”

“[The Ukraine is] a pure client state of the United States State Department.”

“The Russians don’t want American missiles on their border. They don’t want a hostile government next door.”

“Ideologues within the Biden administration did not want a negotiated peace in Ukraine. They wanted, all along, and it’s very clear now, a regime-change war against Russia.”

“Whatever you think of the war in Ukraine, it is pretty clear Zelensky has no interest in freedom and democracy. In fact, Zelensky 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 U.S. tax dollars to erect a one-party police state in Ukraine.”

These are the lies, or what Mrs Greene regards as truths, that Carlson has been peddling for years. And these happen to be, verbatim, the message bullets Kremlin propagandists and trolls have been firing at the West for the better part of 20 years.

Now if it’s true that Putin has granted an interview to Carlson, my innate inquisitiveness makes me ask why. Dictators don’t agree to interviews unless they are absolutely certain about the interviewer’s loyalty. They want the resulting article to advance their cause, in this case that of eroding the West’s resolve to support the Ukraine.

Say what you wish about our media – and God knows I’ve said plenty – but they aren’t bursting at the seams with Putin’s agents of influence, witting or unwitting. That’s why he hasn’t granted a single interview to a Western reporter since 2022.

Now why would he single out our hero for that career-boosting gift? Tucker Carlson has answered this question himself, many times over (see the quotations above).