Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

“woke” is the new caravan.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

The revolution will be supervised.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Late Night Open Thread: Tucker Carlson in Moscow

Late Night Open Thread: Tucker Carlson in Moscow

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Tucker Carlson in Moscow - STOCKPILE

(Michael Ramirez via the Washington Post)

 
Looks like Tucker Carlson’s ploy to boost his and/or Putin’s ratings for an American audience may have backfired on *both* participants… and it could not happen to a more deserving duo.

… What Tucker Carlson Saw When He Interviewed Vladimir Putin
More than anything else, Carlson seemed surprised: by the fact that he got to interview Putin in the Kremlin and even film himself sharing some post-interview impressions in a room full of lacquer and gold leaf; by what Putin said during the interview; and by the man himself. Putin used the interview to deliver a lengthy lecture on the history of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and its aftermath, meant to convince viewers that Ukraine never had a right to exist. When he was done with the lecture, he segued into a litany of grievances against the West, where several generations of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Secretaries of State have, according to Putin, let him down or ghosted him. After the interview, an incredulous Carlson held up a gray cardboard folder with a little rope tie: Putin had given him copies of documents to back up his historical claims. Carlson hadn’t opened it yet. “I thought he was filibustering,” he said, still apparently reeling from the history lesson. “But I concluded after watching all this, no, that was the predicate to his answer: the history of the area and the formation of this country and the connection to Ukraine is part of the basis for his Ukraine policy.”

The content of Putin’s conversation with Carlson was barely distinguishable from the content of Putin’s rare speeches and so-called press conferences and hotlines—annual hours-long, highly orchestrated television productions. Putin’s obsession with history is genuine, as is his belief in a narrative that justifies, indeed makes inevitable, Russia’s war against Ukraine. That Carlson was surprised suggests that he either didn’t watch Putin’s earlier appearances in preparation for the interview, or that, despite copious evidence to the contrary, he imagined that Putin the man would match Putin the role: a dictator whose opponents get killed and jailed and who invades neighboring countries ought to be larger than life, terrifying in person, and certainly not boring…

What Putin Saw When He Was Interviewed by Tucker Carlson
Here was an easy mark. Carlson meekly tried to interrupt Putin a couple of times, to ask a question he seemed stuck on: Why hadn’t all this history and these territorial issues come up when Putin first became President, in 2000? It was an ill-informed question—Putin has trafficked in historical revisionism from the start and became increasingly obsessed with Ukraine after the Orange Revolution, in 2004—and an easy one for Putin to ignore. It seemed to show that Carlson was less well briefed than Putin, who dropped biographical trivia about Carlson into the conversation, a trademark intimidation tactic of a K.G.B. agent. He mentioned, for example, that Carlson had unsuccessfully tried to join the C.I.A…

Most important from Putin’s point of view, Carlson seemed to share two of his basic assumptions: that the war in Ukraine is a proxy war with the United States and that any negotiations will take place between the Kremlin and the White House, presumably without involving Kyiv. Carlson even nudged Putin to call President Biden and say “Let’s work this out.” To which Putin responded that the message Russia wishes to convey to the U.S. is “Stop supplying weapons. It will be over within a few weeks.”…

Tucker Carlson in Moscow - STOCKPILE 1

(Jeff Danziger via GoComics.com)

TUCKER CARLSON’S TRIP TO RUSSIA for an interview with Vladimir Putin was the subject of extraordinary hype in Moscow, treated by the official media almost like a visit from a head of state. State-controlled news outlets breathlessly chronicled his comings and goings: the visit to the fast-food joint Vkusno i Tochka, rebranded from McDonald’s after the latter pulled out of Russian markets; the trip to the Bolshoi for Spartacus, the iconic Soviet-era revolutionary ballet; the metro ride; and, finally, the departure.

Carlson, in a tweet, expressed pride in his accomplishment in having sat down for a state-managed lecture by one of the world’s great monsters. Putin, on the other hand, insulted Carlson throughout the interview. At first watch, it wasn’t clear if either side got exactly what it wanted. Among Russian observers, theories and explanations abound…

“It’s one thing to do your own exposés of globalist conspiracies, and another to find yourself attending an alternative history lecture from Putin in the role of student,” noted TV-Rain host Mikhail Fishman, who knows enough about Carlson’s history to peg him as a conspiracy theorist, in his own sarcastic analysis of the interview. Fishman also mentioned a conspiracy theory about Carlson himself: namely, the rumor that he was in Moscow on a special mission for Donald Trump and had an off-camera conversation with Putin playing emissary rather than journalist. Fishman didn’t necessarily credit this story, but he suggested that Putin almost certainly sees Carlson as “the same as Trump,” or a Trump stand-in. Along the same lines, Russian journalist Igor Yakovenko, a former Duma deputy and general secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists, told the Ukrainian Freedom Channel that Carlson’s visit and the Putin interview was unquestionably meant to boost Trump’s electoral chances for 2024 and to sink any congressional deal that would include aid to Ukraine. Yakovenko sees Trump, Carlson, and Putin as the unholy trinity of this story—or, with Elon Musk (who assiduously promoted the interview), an unholy quadrinity…

Will the interview help or hurt Putin? Nacke, for his part, has unironically thanked Carlson for giving Putin enough uninterrupted time to show himself as a paranoid, rambling, grievance-obsessed fascist. Yakovenko, less optimistic, believes that many viewers outside Russia will naïvely see many of Putin’s claims as at least partially valid, especially since the debunkings will have far less reach.

Whatever the outcome, independent, Russian-speaking journalists have certainly had a field day with the Carlson interview, if only for the “Karlsson-on-the-roof” memes. The famous 1968 animated movie based on Lindgren’s books was called Junior and Karlsson. The jokes practically write themselves.

Reader Interactions

48Comments

  2. 2.

    Leto

    @Anyway: as soon as he comes up on stage to do his acceptance speech, some dude pops up there and yells, “You support genocide!”; his security staff then throw the dude off the stage. Literally, exit stage left on his back. Man. FAFO moment.

  3. 3.

    Spanky

    @Anyway: As the WaPo article sez:

    The unprecedented and partisan resolution — which cleared the House over opposition from Democrats and three GOP members — may not go very far in the Senate, as some Republicans in the upper chamber do not believe that Mayorkas’s actions clear the bar as the “high crimes and misdemeanors” necessary for conviction.

  5. 5.

    brendancalling

    Tucker Carlson went to St. George’s private high school in the 1980s, a time in which sexual and physical abuse of students was rampant. He then married the daughter of the headmaster who turned a blind eye to the whole thing.  That tells you everything you need to know about Tucker the piece of shit traitor. It would serve him right if sometime in the near future Putin had him “fall” out a window.

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    Well at least Pilip didn’t blame the snow. She conceded the race, which already makes her a RINO.

    Also: fuck Tuckems. I hope he has to live off his trust fund from now on. And if he got paid in rubles isn’t that subject to sanction? Not to mention he probably won’t be able to exchange those anywhere in the US.

  11. 11.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

      We owe a debt of gratitude to the one person who made these electoral victories possible tonight, of course I am speaking of Taylor Swift

  12. 12.

    David Fud

    Moscow Tucker is enjoying the sights, is he? Well, propagandist has to do what an propagandist has to do.

  15. 15.

    Origuy

    Tucker spent three days in Moscow in February and thinks it’s better than any city in the US? I spent two weeks there eleven years ago in February and I think maybe it’s better than Bakersfield. Sure the Metro is impressive, but I have the feeling Tucker never saw it. I didn’t get to go to the Bolshoi, but I doubt Tucker is much of a balletomane.

  16. 16.

    Alison Rose

    @ema: MSM metrics:

    If a Republican wins by one percentage point, it’s a decisive victory won by the candidate’s incredible strength and brilliance.

    If a Democrat wins by ten percentage points, it’s a barely eked out lucky win that had nothing to do with the candidate themselves.

  20. 20.

    Citizen Alan

    @Alison Rose: Hell, we’ve seen that if a Republican loses the popular vote but cheats his way through the Electoral College, the MSM thinks he has a mandate to act like a dictator.

  21. 21.

    Frankensteinbeck

    If Putin thinks a Carlson interview will help him in the US, he is indeed delusional.  Carlson is a nobody now, and the story in the US isn’t “Here is why Putin invaded Ukraine”, it’s “Is Carlson an idiot or a traitor?” and “Wow, Putin says creepy Hitler shit.”

  22. 22.

    Jinchi

    @Origuy: Let’s see if Tucker decides to relocate to the most beautiful city in the world, or if he’ll just stay here in the urban backwater that is America.

  24. 24.

    Lyrebird

    @Origuy: Agree that the Moscow Metro stations I have seen are more elegant than most other subway stations.  I do like the tile work on the Red Line in Boston, too, and more to the point, WATF is wrong with that man.  I know that the NYT gave cover to fascism and genocide in WWII, but srsly.

    Thanks Chris Wallace and thanks Anne Laurie for including that.

     

    ETA: if anyone wants more reasons to feel depressed about humanity, you can probably Google the info on how many people died putting that beautiful, elegant gold leaf on those Ru cathedrals back in the day.

  25. 25.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    We’ve had a dozen examples since 2020, from Wisconsin, to Ohio, to Kansas, to the California recall, to one special election after another, to the Georgia senate runoff were the political press says we’re losing or the contest is a toss up and we end up winning by a strong margin.

    Yet Drump, running as an incumbent, wins a primary with a paltry 51% of the vote and they declare that a great victory.

  27. 27.

    Quadrillipede

    @ema: I may be late to this realization, but I am starting to suspect that the inadequate-white man-tantrum centred on the US Republican party (and other countries’ Tory parties) is also spreading throughout most of the mainstream press. Might be time to fuck ’em and move on past ’em..

    [ETA I am white, male and inadequate too, but that’s a me problem, not a rest-of-the-world problem…]

  30. 30.

    ema

    @Quadrillipede:

    I don’t care what their neuroses are. Either be a professional, have some pride in your job and do it properly, or have the courage of your convictions, admit you’re a propagandist and carry on with your despicable job.

  31. 31.

    JWR

    About the first cartoon: back when Paul Conrad retired from his gig doing editorial cartoons for the Los Angeles Times, they hired his mirror image in Michael Ramirez, and I hated him for stealing Conrad’s style while reversing his political views. Nowadays, he’s more of a Never-Trumper.

    And who is the guy standing to Fucker’s left at the Bolshoi? Is that what’s his name, the big Repub focus group guy whose name I can’t recall, or just some no name RU minder? (I’ll remember focus group guy’s name. Eventually.)

    Finally, I’m watching DW News, and I notice that Speaker Johnson is sporting some very weird, but well-crafted eyebrows.

  32. 32.

    Origuy

    @Lyrebird: The elaborately decorated stations are beautiful, and I believe St Petersburg and Kyiv have some, too. They were a Soviet attempt to create secular temples to the workers’ state.

    But I was thinking of the Metro as a service. The fares were low, and you could get anywhere on the system for the same price. Everything seemed to work and the system was fairly clean. I did see some graffiti and there were beggars. Forget about wheelchair accessibility, though.

  35. 35.

    Quadrillipede

    @ema: Agreed. FWIW, I like working with people across all ages, races, cultures and genders. Drawing on people’s different backgrounds and perspectives makes my workplace a great place to work and makes us more competitive. Near the start of my career, I worked in mostly-white, mostly-male frat-boy companies, and it’s not something I miss in the slightest.

  37. 37.

    mrmoshpotato

    Looks like Tucker Carlson’s ploy to boost his and/or Putin’s ratings for an American audience may have backfired on *both* participants… and it could not happen to a more deserving duo.

    Too bad!  So sad!  Fuck ’em!

  38. 38.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @JWR: That’s not Luntz.   Luntz is old, with a bad wig and the guy in the photo is a lot younger.

  39. 39.

    Jay

    After schmoozing onstage with Smith, Carlson went on to Moscow where he sat down with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who granted him an interview. Although “interview” may not be the right word for that spectacle. Humiliation? Bitch-slap? Prolonged wedgie? Carlson interviewed Putin like a naughty puppy interviews a rolled-up newspaper. Putin talked, Carlson sat. Putin insulted Carlson, Carlson squirmed. The former Fox star is lucky Putin didn’t conclude by carving a prison tattoo on his ass with a sharpened toothbrush and the sooty, charcoal remains of whatever credibility Carlson had left.

    https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2024/02/13/After-Tucker-Carlson-What-Next-Danielle-Smith/

  40. 40.

    Kathleen

    @Alison Rose: A couple of days ago NYT hack’s comment about this race sparked a thread in which in the replies we crowd sourced NYT’s response to a Dem win. We did pretty well.

  45. 45.

    zhena gogolia

    I wish I didn’t miss these threads while sleeping! And I don’t have time to read it until about 2:30 today.

  48. 48.

    waspuppet

    @Alison Rose: Neither the candidate nor the overall direction of the parties ever has anything to do with a Democratic victory. They always just sort of happen, like the weather, and there are no actual causes, or lessons to be learned. And for God’s sake, never ever talk about them for more than 12 hours. This is black-letter pundit law.

    Nacke, for his part, has unironically thanked Carlson for giving Putin enough uninterrupted time to show himself as a paranoid, rambling, grievance-obsessed fascist.

    Eight years ago, Donald Trump got more than enough time to show himself as a paranoid, rambling, grievance-obsessed fascist, and it didn’t work out too well (thanks again to hard pundit law). So yeah I’m not a big believer in this dynamic.

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