For months, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has been questioning why the United States is trying to protect Ukraine from a possible Russian invasion.
And now, Carlson’s pro-Russia talking points have made their way from a New York TV studio to the homes of millions of his viewers, and to at least one congressional office whose staffers are picking up the phone and hearing constituents express support for a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) told The Daily Beast that his office phones have been ringing off the hook in recent days with constituents calling and asking why the U.S. isn’t supporting Russia’s plans, citing Carlson’s prime time show.
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“I, of course, know what Tucker Carlson’s been saying on Fox News for several weeks,” Malinowski said. “But this was the first time I got calls from constituents parroting his propaganda about Russia and Ukraine. And people were basically saying, ‘We shouldn’t be going to war for Ukraine, we should be giving Russia essentially what it wants.’”
Carlson’s rants have lately aligned with pro-Kremlin talking points about Ukraine. Carlson has suggested Russian President Vladimir Putin "just wants to keep his western borders secure,” an argument Putin himself has pushed forward as a justification for the troop buildup along Russia’s Ukrainian border. Putin and his advisers have also pointed the finger at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in recent days, claiming the NATO alliance has “threatened” Russia and propelled Moscow to send over troops and equipment.
Carlson has argued politicians in the U.S. have contributed to rising tensions by helping Ukraine, blaming “neocons in Washington” for “recklessly stoking conflict.”
Carlson is taking this approach despite the U.S. intelligence community specifically warning about this kind of argument: that Russia is running information operations about alleged threats to Russia to intentionally create a pretext for invasion.
”It’s a free country. Everyone, including Tucker Carlson, has a right to their opinion,” Malinowski told The Daily Beast. “But when you have somebody with a mass following on cable news and social media working every night to convince Americans that one of our chief adversaries in the world is actually in the right, [it’s] dangerous and stupid. And it raises questions about the people who run Fox News and why they want to provide a platform for this propaganda.”
Malinowski, who previously served as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, suggested it would behoove Fox News to reassess Carlson’s standing at the station—ratings be damned.
“If I were running a TV network, I would want multiple views represented, but not this. No one has a right to a primetime show on cable news,” Malinowski told The Daily Beast. “I would hope that the people who run Fox might show us that they have some values.”
Carlson’s pushback comes as the United States and NATO allies are working to project unity against Russia’s unprovoked aggression towards Ukraine. Republicans and Democrats alike, despite many differences on Capitol Hill, have been relatively united in their opposition to Russia and support for Ukraine.
But the issue is broader than just constituents calling up congressional offices and badgering underpaid staffers. Malinowski has concerns about the way these kinds of Russian talking points might spread and reverberate for years to come.
“Most Republicans in Congress, for now, agree that we should be siding with Ukraine and that what Putin is doing is wrong,” Malinowski said. “But I think they’re a bit in denial about what’s bubbling up from the base of the party, encouraged by people like Tucker Carlson, and to some extent the former president.”
In recent days, the Pentagon has been working to deter Russia in ways that suggest diplomacy is faltering, ordering 8,500 troops on Monday to be on high alert to potentially deploy to Eastern European countries if the situation deteriorates with Russia.
The troops have not been deployed yet and are only meant to act as a deterrent force if they are deployed, according to the Pentagon.
But some of that is getting lost in translation with Americans who are claiming the U.S. wants to go to war with Russia, said Mike Nelson, a fellow at the National Security Institute.
“When we talk about support to Ukraine, a lot of people are mischaracterizing that as though the United States is going to war with Russia on Ukraine’s part. And that’s not what’s really being discussed,” Nelson said. “We’re not talking about a direct force-on-force conflict between the U.S. and Russia.”
Other Carlson talking points don’t make sense either.
Those who say they have concerns about U.S. immigration flows and the country’s southern border have been raising questions about why the United States would try to protect Ukrainians from attack since they think Russia is just trying to protect its own borders, flooding Malinowski’s telephone and CSPAN call-in lists alike. But that’s just comparing apples to hand grenades.
”That’s pure Tucker Carlson,” Malinowski told The Daily Beast. “He says, ‘Democrats want to open our southern border but suddenly they want to protect Ukraine’s border.’ That’s a talking point that we’re seeing—as if you can equate allowing legal immigration, allowing people across a border to immigrate to the United States, with tanks crossing the border to seize territory.”
Malinowski added that the flurry of calls is emblematic of a much deeper problem in America surrounding media literacy.
“The problem is we’re increasingly living in these echo chambers. Whether it’s cable news, or even worse, social media,” Malinowski said. “People who engage with one point of view are then automatically fed extreme versions of that point of view.”
While Russian disinformation campaigns have often relied on bots or inauthentic activity on social media, they’re also relying on prominent narrators, like Carlson, much more as social media companies work to tamp down misinformation, said Nina Jankowicz, a global fellow at the Wilson Center who studies the intersection of democracy and technology in Central and Eastern Europe.
Russia has “just gotten really good at laundering information into vulnerable ecosystems that are going to amplify it,” Jankowicz told The Daily Beast. “Local amplifiers who are trusted are the key to their campaigns now.”
Jankowicz added that, as long as you get that narrative before some producer, or somebody who has got one of these guys’ ears, “they’re going to amplify it to tens of millions of followers.”
