Tucker Carlson, whose Putin-friendly commentary stretches back years, was at it again during a recent exchange in Australia with a reporter who asked if he felt “any shame” about his stances and having been dubbed a “useful idiot” for the Russian president.
Carlson is in the country on a whirlwind speaking tour, joined by some of Australia’s most controversial identities; including Clive Palmer, a mining billionaire-turned-politician who is now on his third attempt to build a replica of the ill-fated ocean liner, Titanic.
In a video clip that Carlson posted on X Wednesday afternoon, Sydney Morning Herald political correspondent Paul Sakkal began to ask his question about the Russian president, but only got seven words in before Carlson started up his usual antics.
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“You’ve preempted my question on President Putin,” Sakkal said, prompting Carlson to immediately feign outrage while repeating the name.
“He’s so bad!” Carlson exclaimed sarcastically, laughing it up. “Did he make you take the COVID shot?”
When Sakkal informed the conspiracy theorist that the vaccines saved millions of lives, Carlson refused to believe it.
“Oh, yeah. Safe and effective. This is why everyone loves the media!” he mocked with a high-pitched cackle. “It’s like a time capsule. It’s like you’re the last Japanese soldier on Okinawa thinking the war’s still going on. No, it didn’t save millions of lives.”
A frustrated Sakkal interjected: “Can I get the full [question] without interruption?” Once Carlson finally allowed Sakkal to continue, he went ahead.
“I’m interested in your position on Putin. The many people in this crowd who would adore a conservative prime minister in this country like John Howard, Tony Abbott, mainstream right-wingers like Boris Johnson, Australian Liberals—some of their MP’s are in the crowd—are vehemently anti-Putin,” he began.
“They believe he’s a reprehensible figure who doesn’t believe in the values of conservatism, such as the rule of law and democracy, which gives us the freedoms that we have in our country. I’m interested: Do you feel any level of shame or regret that you were termed a ‘useful idiot’?” he asked, eliciting a laugh from Carlson.
Sakkal then mentioned the fallout from Carlson’s interview with Putin in February.
“Vladimir Putin himself said in his Russian media that he was surprised at how weak your questions were, and he also said that you were wrong when you said that no other journalists had asked to interview him, and he said, that’s not true.”
Carlson, calling Sakkal’s question an “absurd soliloquy,” accused him of taking Putin’s “word for things” after having previously considering the Russian president to be a “psychopathic liar.”
Carlson then took issue with Sakkal’s characterization of Boris Johnson.
“First, I’m stuck on the idea that Boris Johnson is a right-winger. Do you know Boris Johnson? I do. Boris Johnson is a criminal buffoon who, like so many who claim to love Ukraine, is single handedly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men in this war that Ukraine cannot win,” he said.
“And I would just refer you to Wikipedia. How many more people does Russia have than Ukraine? Do you know? 100 million. And in a land where that’s a relevant number, it is not possible for Ukraine to beat Russia. The best they can do is go for peace. That’s been known, including by [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, who wanted that since the early days of this conflict,” he continued. “And Boris Johnson, on orders from the Biden administration, shut down—and this is not a disputed fact, this is a fact admitted by everybody now—shut down the peace negotiations almost two years ago, and Ukraine has been completely destroyed.”
That claim about Johnson, however, is disputed, with The Guardian calling attention to one study in Foreign Affairs that describes a sequence of events that is not as clear-cut as Carlson depicted it.
Carlson continued: “And now Zelensky has passed a law allowing foreign corporations to own land there. So you tell me what Ukraine is going to look like in 30 years, when all of it is owned by Blackrock and multinational corporations, and its population is not Ukrainian? Okay?”
Carlson concluded by saying he does feel shame—not about anything he has said, but about Western governments’ involvement in trying to prevent a Russian takeover of Ukraine.
“The tragedy of what’s happened in Ukraine orchestrated by the Western powers, including your government…and driven by my government—I feel shame about it and I hope you do too—is really one of the great crimes of my lifetime. So the idea that somehow if you’re against that, you’re for Putin—well of course that’s absurd,” he insisted.
During a 2019 episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the namesake host said he was rooting for Russia in its conflict against Ukraine. Carlson claimed later that he was just kidding.
