Dick Durbin Blasts Tucker Carlson on Senate Floor: ‘Should Be Ashamed of Himself’ for ‘Making Excuses on Fox for Vladimir Putin’
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) ripped Tucker Carlson during a floor speech on Monday afternoon, saying the Fox News host “should be ashamed of himself” over his Russia coverage.
Carlson has been something of an outlier among cable hosts on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While most have urged the United States to provide some measure of assistance to Ukrainians trying to defend themselves, the Fox News personality has taken a laissez-faire approach. He has also called Ukraine “a tyranny.”
Durbin recounted some of the atrocities committed by Russian forces in its invasion of Ukraine, noting that “over the weekend, Vladimir Putin intensified his illegal, unprovoked war on Ukraine, shelling apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, creating an obscene body of evidence that Vladimir Putin should be charged and convicted of the worst possible war crimes.”
The senator then turned his attention to Putin’s “apologists” in the U.S. and named Carlson in particular:
That’s why I had to hesitate for a moment and say when I hear apologists for Putin in America, I wonder who they are and what they’re made of. Tucker Carlson is one that even the Russians are recommending that their friends in the media listen to, making excuses on Fox for Vladimir Putin. There are no excuses, none acceptable on the subject. Mr. Carlson should be ashamed of himself. It is impossible to know how many innocent civilians have already died in Ukraine. Estimates run from hundreds to thousands. And an estimated 2.8 million Ukrainians – almost all of them women, children, and the elderly – have fled in the bitter cold to other nations, carrying one or two suitcases and a backpack and a baby on their side.
Clips from Carlson’s show have appeared on Russian state TV. On Sunday, Mother Jones reported it obtained a leaked Kremlin memo addressed to Russian media commentators stating, “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.”
Watch above via Fox News.
