- Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin was greeted with some interest on Capitol Hill.
- J.D. Vance called it “interesting,” and Ron Johnson said some of Putin’s points were “accurate.”
- Republican Congressman Clay Higgins said, “President Putin is a studious man with a resolute spirit.”
When former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released his statement, Interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin At least a few Republicans watched with interest on Capitol Hill last week.
Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said he watched about 30 minutes of the more than two-hour interview. And although he stressed that he did not “trust and believe everything” said by the Russian leader, he could not help but greet the scene with some amazement.
“It was impressive,” Higgins said. “President Putin seems to be a strong-minded researcher who has always been very honest about his beliefs. You end a conversation with him and think, ‘What he says is true. I may not believe it, but I know he believes what he says.’
Several Republicans told Business Insider they didn’t watch the interview, citing lack of interest or time. But Texas Rep. Troy Neals said he didn’t have time to watch the interview because he was so busy over the weekend “watching the trains in Chicago and Milwaukee,” and said he was asking his staff to explain the interview to him.
“I think Tucker Carlson is great. Obviously, I think it was a great opportunity,” Nehls said as he lit a cigar on the House steps, before former President Donald Trump won re-election in November. and made a unilateral prediction that the civil war would end quickly. End the war in Ukraine by March 1, 2025.
“He would say, Vlad, get out of Ukraine on March 1,” Nehls said. “it’s over.”
The interview’s release comes just as Congress is considering it. Send another $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. The Senate passed a bill Tuesday to do just that, over the objections of a group of far-right Republican senators. The bill’s future in the House is uncertain, with Speaker Mike Johnson and many other Republicans opposed to the aid package in its current form.
These senators include Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who has long been a staunch supporter of Ukraine and attended the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May 2019. I even visited Kiev to do so. But in recent months, Mr. Johnson has appeared convinced that continued U.S. aid to Ukraine is necessary. Intervening in Ukraine was futile and he withdrew support for aid to Ukraine.
“Tucker’s interview was very interesting,” Johnson said in an interview. recent interviews Speaking on the conservative network Real America’s Voice, he stressed that although Putin is a “war criminal” and “obviously not telling the whole truth,” there is much to be learned from the interview with Carlson.
“I want you to take things with a grain of salt, but a lot of the points that President Vladimir Putin made are accurate,” Johnson said. “They’re making people believe that Ukraine can win, but Ukraine can’t win, and Putin won’t lose. President Putin won’t lose. He’s not going to lose.”
“Every nation tells a story about itself”
For more than two hours, the Russian president addressed a variety of different topics, including: imprisonment Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich talks about Russia’s territorial claims in Ukraine.
The Russian leader even appeared to be subtly alluding to American domestic politics aimed at conservative audiences, including recent decisions in Colorado and Maine. Former President Donald Trump arrested From a vote under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“America is a complex country. On the one hand, it is conservative, but on the other hand, it is rapidly changing,” Putin was quoted as saying, according to Karlsson’s interpretation. “Who makes decisions in elections? Can we understand this if each state has its own laws? Each state regulates itself. Someone at the state level is excluded from elections There is a possibility that it will be done.”
The Russian leader went on to elaborate on his dissatisfaction with NATO expansion into Eastern Europe since 2000, and claimed that the CIA orchestrated the 2014 Euromaidan revolution that led to the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will “de-Nazify” this country.
“It’s an absolutely disgusting lie that Ukraine attacked Russia in 2014,” said Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana, a Ukrainian immigrant. She added: “I hope people aren’t that stupid and can understand what’s going on.”
In asserting Russia’s claims to Ukraine, Putin referred to the history of the Kievan Rus, a state that existed between the 9th and 13th centuries and is seen by both Russia and Ukraine as a kind of cultural predecessor.
“He forgot that Rus’ are Kiev Rus’, didn’t he?” Spartz said with a laugh. “If you go that far, then Kiev has more claims against Moscow than Moscow has against Kiev.”
For those who study Russia, pushed back for a long time That’s beside the point for Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who mentioned Putin’s historical claims but said he found the interview “interesting.”
“Every country tells a story about itself and its enemies that is rooted, at least in part, in false claims,” Vance wrote on Twitter last week. “The point is, if you want to understand the world situation and make smart decisions, you need to understand how people see themselves.”
The interview was widely dismissed among Democrats, with some suggesting that Carlson may have been wrong to push for the interview in the first place.
Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, who just visited Kyiv over the weekend, told reporters this week that she had discussed the interview “quite a bit” with other members of Congress during her visit, but that it “didn’t really come up.” It didn’t happen,” he said. She was talking about her meeting with Ukrainian leaders.
“The stupid nature of America’s so-called journalists who allowed President Putin to deploy propaganda for so long was not worthy of the kind of conversation we were having,” Spanberger said.
But even Spartz, who claimed Putin lied during the interview, said: “There is some truth in what Putin said.”
“He said you are spending money to undermine your own currency. And now China is in a growth pattern and you are in a decline pattern. There’s some truth to it,” Spartz said. “And we have to be smarter.”
And Higgins had little time to criticize Carlson’s interview.
“I think it was a brave move on Tucker’s part,” Higgins said. “If it wasn’t for that interview, there would be kind of a hole here and we tend to want to fill it ourselves.