Standing in front of the Moscow skyline, Tucker Carlson announced that he was about to do what no other Western journalist had been able to do for the past two years: sit down with President Vladimir Putin.
In a video published on He claimed that he was doing something that he would not do.
He said Western media shunned Putin, preferring to sit with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy in “fawn pep sessions” aimed at giving a one-sided view of the war in Ukraine. .
What Carlson was unable to explain to his audience was that since the war began, the Russian president has rarely granted interviews to correspondents of Western media outlets based in Moscow, and that he could be asked difficult questions about Ukraine. He has avoided all sexual media appearances.
Instead, Putin preferred to speak to Russian state media outlets whose stories are tightly controlled by Kremlin censors.
Karlsson is not the only Western journalist brave enough to interview Putin. He is the only person allowed to be interviewed.
“Does Tucker really think that we journalists haven’t been trying to interview him every day since Putin invaded Ukraine in earnest?” veteran CNN correspondent Christine Amanpour said on Tuesday. I wrote this in response to his video of the night.
“That’s ridiculous. We will continue to seek interviews, as we have for years.”