Chris Wallace and his panel on CNN this Saturday didn't mince words when it came to his former Fox colleague's disgusting excuse for an interview with Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin. How bad are things when you've got right wing hacks like Wallace and The New York Times' Bret Stephens ripping you apart and comparing you to Tokyo Rose?
WALLACE: Tucker Carlson showed up in Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin. It turned out to be anything but an interview. Putin droned on for two hours and seven minutes while Tucker sat there like an eager puppy. Occasionally, but rarely, he got in a question, like this one about the power of the deep state in Washington.
CARLSON: It sounds like you're describing a system that's not run by the people who are elected in your telling?
PUTIN: That's right, that's right.
WALLACE: But more telling than what Tucker asked is what he didn’t ask. Nothing about why Putin invaded a sovereign country. Nothing about targeting civilians. Nothing about Russian war crimes. A reporter can ask Putin a tough question, if, he wants a real interview.
Wallace cut to a clip of himself interviewing Putin for Fox back in 2018:
WALLACE: Why is it that so many of the people that oppose Vladimir Putin end up dead or close to it?
Wallace, along with his panel, then proceeded to tear into Carlson:
WALLACE: But apparently that’s not why Tucker went to Moscow. During the Cold War, gullible Westerners who spread Soviet propaganda were dismissed as “useful idiots.” But calling Tucker that is unfair to useful idiots. Now he’s made a cynical decision to chase MAGA’s affection for dictators, and what better way to cash in than Putin’s Kremlin? Alright Bret, tell me why I'm wrong.
STEPHENS: You are not wrong. You are not wrong, and any of us who have had opportunities to interview bad guys, and as we should, ask tough questions and hold them at least to a moment in a spotlight to which they are not accustomed.
But what you saw there, I mean, I think I mentioned this to you, you're looking at the Tokyo Rose of our day, basically broadcasting fascist propaganda to credulous people in the west who are eager to buy into the mythology of Putin as a champion of the Nordic races against their enemies, and as an enemy of wokeness.
It's one of the most disgraceful -- to call it a journalistic performance is wrong because he's not a journalist, and I don't even think it was a performance. It was just simply being a scribe to one of the most vicious dictators of our time.
SWISHER: Also, he did sit there -- that was astonishing, for that half hour allowing Putin to go on about the history. I mean, it just wasn't even very good. It was like watching someone who can't play a sport just fumble over and over again as an interviewer.
Wallace asked they why they believed Carlson went to Moscow, and Swisher responded that Carlson was "washed up," and "trying to get attention for himself and make himself relevant" before saying the only reason he scored the interview is because he's "a lapdog."
Tucker Carlson, so far off the deep end that even the right wing propagandists here in America decided that's a bridge too far. Congratulations Tucker. You've managed to make yourself a pariah in a good portion of right-wing world now and not just with liberals.
