Billy Vue
Feb 6, 2024
On February 6th, Former Fox show host, Tucker Carlson, interviewed Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. This marks the first interview that Putin has taken from western media ever since invading Ukraine, 2 years ago.
Carlson is known as a controversial figure in the Journalism and political world. There’s a lot of mixed emotions regarding the public’s opinion of him. There are videos online depicting Carlson as a great person, but Carlson is also known for blatantly lying to his viewers and making outrageous takes just for the sake of more clicks. So, is he the right person to give Putin, of all people, an interview? Probably not.
Now onto Putin. Putin is an even more controversial figure. Putin has kept quiet from the western media and has been the pitfall for our spending of near hundreds of billions of dollars to assist Ukraine in their war efforts. The fact that Putin even agreed to be part of the interview is somewhat of a win for Carlson.
Carlson faced a lot of backlash for giving Putin a platform to speak on, but he defended his decision, stating, “Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now... They’ve never heard his voice. That’s wrong.”.
The “righteous” act of Carlson was halted, when the interview started off with a 20-minute-long spew of history from President Putin. Putin detailed the long history between Russia and Ukraine in his history lesson, in which Carlson was either uneasy, or impatient, trying to interrupt and end the lecture, stating, “I just don’t understand how this is relevant”.
Along the interview, the conversation moves to the topic of the U.S. supporting Ukraine, in sending money and military weapons over, to which, Putin responded, “Is it not better to reach an agreement with Russia?”. Putin insisted that Russia was ready to talk and that our aid only furthered the conflict.
In the last portion of the interview, Carlson asks about an American Journalist, Evan Gershkovich, who is in Russia’s custody. Gershkovich was accused of espionage and can be facing up to 20 years in Russian jail. The U.S. believe Gershkovich to be wrongly accused and have been working to bring him back for a while now. Putin offered an ultimatum, “At the end of the day, it does not make sense to keep him in prison in Russia. We want the U.S. special services to think about how they can contribute to achieving the goals our special services are pursuing”.
This situation is reminiscent of a previous U.S.-Russia prisoner trade in 2022, where U.S. Women’s Basketball player, Brittney Griner, was given back in exchange for Russian Arms Dealer, Viktor Bout.
While the interview was nothing special, it gave at least some insight into what Putin thinks, regarding events Russia is involved in. This was also a win for Carlson, because he got exactly what he wanted, a huge exclusive interview with the President of Russia.