Putin's latest toy boy, Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson often looks confused, but the real mystery is why a transparently perfidious Russian agent still has a highly rated show on American cable television. He should be relegated to Fox & Friends cooking segments in which he delights viewers with his babushka’s secret family polonium-borscht recipe. (“Now, let’s just take a look at the dish we whipped up earlier. It’s cooling by that open four-story window, Ainsley. Go ahead, grab it. I’ll be right here. No, really, it’ll be fine.”)
Of course, while Rupert Murdoch’s standards tend to be lower than his Pleistocene gonads in a Gold’s Gym sauna, he has to have at least some inkling that he’s writing checks to a Russian asset, right? I mean, it’s obvious enough for Vladimir Putin’s bumblef*ck brigade to notice.
In a new exclusive report, Mother Jones reporter David Corn reveals that Russia hasn’t simply noticed Tucker’s pro-Putin puffery, it can’t get enough of that good old-timey Cold War propaganda.
On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson.
“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”
Well, this memo’s not exactly surprising, given that Tucker literally said he was rooting for Russia when it comes to its manufactured disputes with Ukraine.
The document—titled “For Media and Commentators (recommendations for coverage of events as of 03.03)”—was produced, according to its metadata, at a Russian government agency called the Department of Information and Telecommunications Support, which is part of the Russian security apparatus. It was provided to Mother Jones by a contributor to a national Russian media outlet who asked not to be identified. The source said memos like this one have been regularly sent by Putin’s administration to media organizations during the war.
So if I had a cable TV news show that influenced millions of guileless Americans who simply wanted information on Gold Bond Medicated Powder but were treated to Soviet-style agitprop instead, I’d be horrified to discover what I’d been doing. And I’d stop immediately. And if the murderous Putin regime was simply delighted with what I was doing, I think it might at least give me pause. But Tucker just keeps chugging away like a guy who bet big on the over-under for the onset of the apocalypse.
Seriously, though, this should be the easiest personnel decision in the history of broadcast media. Rupert! For fuck’s sake, fire Tucker Carlson! What the fuck are you waiting for? Does he have to steal someone else’s lunch from the company break room? Or does someone need to steal his lunch and find it’s full of human sweetbreads and steamy love notes from Vlad?
Needless to say, our country—and the world—won’t be truly safe for democracy until shitbag silver spoons like this are sent home. And by “home” I mean Russia. No doubt he’d be the king of Putin’s fake Russia-only internet. It’s the least he deserves given everything he’s done for the Motherland.
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