Tucker Carlson’s desire to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin shows the right-wing former Fox News host is a “useful idiot” and “like a puppy dog,” Hillary Clinton said in an MSNBC interview Wednesday.
The former secretary of state reacted to the news of Carlson’s forthcoming interview with Putin—the first by an American media figure since the authoritarian leader initiated the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
After anchor Alex Wagner asked what Carlson’s latest act shows about himself, right-wing media and Putin, Clinton was scathing.
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“Well, it shows me what I think we’ve all known: he’s what’s called a ‘useful idiot,’” she said. “I mean, if you actually read translations of what’s being said on Russian media, they make fun of him. I mean, he’s like a puppy dog.”
Clinton then said Carlson’s future could lie with state media in Putin’s country.
“After having been fired from so many outlets in the United States,” Clinton said, referring to Carlson’s on-camera careers at CNN, then MSNBC, and finally Fox, “I would not be surprised if he emerges with a contract with a Russian outlet.”
“He says things that are not true, he parrots Vlamidir Putin’s pack of lies about Ukraine,” she added of the conspiracy-friendly host. “So, I don’t see why Putin wouldn't give him an interview.”
Russian state media has long been pushing for a one-on-one interview between Putin and Carlson, who said in a 2019 episode of his Fox show that he was rooting for Russia in its conflict with Ukraine. Carlson later claimed he was kidding, but the sincerity of that walk-back has been questioned in light of what he would go on to say in later years.
In the interview, Clinton also weighed in on how the Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday about how several states have removed Donald Trump from their ballots, having found that he engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6.
Clinton said it “would be better” to just defeat Trump on Election Day, but acknowledged that the argument that he can be barred from holding office under the 14th Amendment has constitutional merit.
“I would be perfectly satisfied if we beat him both in the popular vote, and the Electoral College, as Joe Biden did so convincingly in 2020,” she said. “But we also have laws, and that is, of course, what courts are for. They have to interpret those laws.”
Clinton mused that the court could end up ruling that states can decide for themselves whether Trump is ineligible, as opposed to the court itself issuing that opinion. Efforts to strike Trump from the ballot in some states would spur a “political firestorm,” she added.
