Congressman Calls Out Tucker Carlson’s Efforts to Interview Vladimir Putin: ‘It’s Sickening. It’s Un-American.’
Rep. David Cicilline ripped Fox News and Tucker Carlson over the reported efforts to try and interview Russian President Vladimir Putin amid a threat of war in Eastern Europe, even though there is no indication that those reports are current.
MSNBC Contributor, and former RNC Chair, Michael Steele referenced a Daily Beast article by Julia Davis, who detailed comments made by RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan while appearing on The Evening with Vladimir Soloviev last Wednesday. Davis reports:
The show aired a translated clip of Tucker Carlson Tonight from the night before, where Carlson’s guest, retired Army Col. Doug Macgregor, argued that Russia’s intent to subjugate Ukraine should be taken seriously and even respected. Macgregor contended that “Russia has legitimate national security interests in Ukraine” and said that “Russia is about to demonstrate that we are powerless in Eastern Europe to stop them.” Macgregor asserted: “And I do not see any evidence for this overwhelming support around the world for sanctions against Russia over something that most people rightly regard as a matter of national security interest to Russia.” Carlson nodded approvingly.
After viewing the video, the head of RT praised Carlson in a way no other American television host is being lauded on Kremlin-funded TV. Delivering her pitch to Putin in the style of former President Trump’s notorious “Russia, if you’re listening,” Simonyan gushed to Soloviev: “You showed the clip of wonderful Tucker Carlson, who—by the way—is dreaming of interviewing Vladimir Putin, simply dreaming about it! It’s not within my purview, but if anyone could make it happen, it would be amazing. He is the most popular host in the United States and perhaps the only one who is reasonable, has the biggest audience, who understands everything the way it should be understood.” Soloviev and guests in the studio nodded approvingly.
Filling in for host Medhi Hasan, Steele said to his guest, “It’s being reported that Fox News and Tucker Carlson are working to secure an interview with Vladimir Putin,” citing Davis’s report that “Kremlin representatives actually think this would be a good thing for Putin.” He then asked if he found that frustrating,
“It’s not frustrating,” Cicilline replied. “It’s sickening. It’s un-American.”
“This is the same man who said, why aren’t we supporting Russia in this conflict? Russia and Ukraine are both foreign countries,” Cicilline continued. “The absurdity of not recognizing that one of them is a democracy where people have elected to turn to the west and don’t want to be part of Russia and the other is a thuggish dictator.”
“The idea that he thinks they’re the same is preposterous,” he added. “This is the same person who went to Hungary to interview Victor Orban, and I guess for his encore, he’ll have [Rodrigo] Duterte from the Philippines. It’s shocking, it’s embarrassing, he ought to be ashamed of himself.”
While Davis’s report shows how much of Carlson’s talking points are politically simpatico to that of the Kremlin and Putin, it does not make clear that there are current efforts for Carlson to try and interview Putin. Carlson DID effort to interview Putin last year and which was caught by standard NSA surveillance, which he used as evidence he was being spied upon. The NSA found no evidence that that was the case.
Watch above via MSNBC.
