“To be honest, I thought he was going to be aggressive and ask so-called tough questions. Not only was I prepared for that, I wanted it, because it would have given me the opportunity to respond with sharp answers,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his television interview on Wednesday evening regarding the interview with Tucker Carlson. “Similar.”
Putin's comments were reported by the official Russian news agency on Wednesday TASS Among other things guardian I watched too. An excerpt of the interview with the Russian President regarding Tucker Carlson is also on the official website of the Kremlin Readable.
The former Fox News star and far-right icon sympathetic to conspiracy theories gave a two-hour interview with the Russian president in Moscow last Thursday. The interview began strangely, with Putin answering Carlson's first question: “Is this a talk show or a serious conversation?”, and then launching into a half-hour historical exposition, which the American correspondent could not even interrupt. We have summarized the interview in this article because, as we wrote, it did not contain any great news, and it was practically a good idea for Putin to recap his views on the invasion of Ukraine. We have fact-checked some of Putin's statements in this article.
Carlson was the first American journalist to be interviewed by Putin since he launched a “special military operation” against Ukraine in February 2022, despite receiving regular inquiries from Western media, as the Kremlin confirmed. The Kremlin says the Russian president agreed to the interview with Carlson because he believed the former Fox News host's approach differed from the “one-sided” coverage of Western news outlets.
Carlson received a lot of criticism after the interview for avoiding sensitive questions. And according to signs, this is exactly what Putin had a problem with.
“He tried to interrupt me several times, but surprisingly for a Western journalist, he remained patient and listened to my long monologue, especially when I was talking about history. He gave me no reason to do what I was willing to do.
“That's why, frankly, I didn't quite enjoy that interview,” Putin said in an interview with Pavel Zarubin on Wednesday evening.
He added that viewers should judge how useful the conversation was in the end. In response to Zarubikin's suggestion that Carlson might be subject to sanctions or even arrested in the United States after the interview (there is no indication of this, it is spreading only at the level of rumors), Putin replied:
“It wouldn't be good for Carlson. I feel sorry for him, but it was his decision. He knew what he was doing. On the other hand, this could be a good opportunity for people around the world to learn about the true nature of the modern 'liberal democratic' dictatorship that it purports to represent.” “The current ruling class in the United States. This would reveal its true face.”
Tucker Carlson has not yet responded to the Russian President's statements.
In an interview on Wednesday, Putin said he supports Biden against Trump in the US presidential election because Biden is “a more experienced, predictable person and an old-fashioned politician.” Trump, a staunch friend of Putin, responded by saying he took the Russian president's words as a compliment. We've written more about this here.
