I watched the full interview on Tucker Carlson’s website early this morning. I won’t give a play-by-play description of what was said, as that has been done a hundred times already. There’s a good synopsis of the main points on Zero Hedge. Instead, I’ll just give my general observations.
There’s the widespread hysteria about Tucker going “soft” on Putin, and I consider this accusation ridiculous. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being friendly and 10 being hostile, I would give this exchange a 4. It was more friendly than hostile, but Tucker did challenge Putin’s statements and try (though unsuccessfully) to redirect the conversation at multiple points. I consider the overall tone of Tucker’s approach to be fairly neutral. Definitely more neutral than any western interview of Putin, Zelensky, Biden, or even aging neoliberal oligarchs like failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. But that’s the problem with our mainstream “news” (I use the term generously). None of these people consider themselves journalists, but information henchmen of the regime. A regime official like Joe Biden or Antony Blinken gets the most absurdly fawning praise and admiration of interviewing them, and with “adversaries” the opposite treatment is applied.
From a journalism standpoint, this approach is ridiculous. The purpose of an interview is to get that person’s viewpoints as coherently as possible. But mainstream western journalists treat the interview as a high school debate club, with half or more of the runtime filled with just this journalist talking over the interviewee and spamming as many regime talking points as possible. Fortunately, Tucker did not do this and that’s probably at least part of the reason Putin accepted an interview with him in the first place.
Tucker went into the interview expecting surface-level explanation of current events, and that shows in his prompts. Basically, what was the trigger for Russia intervening in Ukraine in February 2022. In other words, what is Russia’s history with Ukraine and where did it go wrong? So naturally, Putin gave a 30+ minute synopsis starting in the 9th Century. A college-level dissertation on the history of Rus caught some viewers by surprise, myself included, and it is useful for American audiences who don’t know anything about Russia besides the revisionist history we have been fed for decades. So for those willing to listen, Putin’s lecture was good. Even if this stream of encyclopediac knowledge went over a lot of people’s heads, it at least delivers home the point that Putin is highly educated and knowledgeable. Tucker was taken aback by this and objected a few times, but Putin reminded him that he had claimed to want a serious discussion, not a talk show. And that I think is why this interview was so significant, because it is a serious in-depth discussion, not a cheap talk show, or surface level pop history lesson on TikTok.
It would be possible for an American president to give an equally lengthy and in-depth of American history going back 1,000 years, starting in Britain. The exact starting point of such a history lecture would be a bit arbitrary, but 1066 would make sense. The death of Edward the Confessor led to a power struggle for the throne between Saxons, Vikings, and Normans. Harold crushed the Viking army at Stamford bridge, and was himself defeated and killed by the Normans at Hastings, making this a year a crucial point in world history. Other major inflection points in our history would likely be the Baron wars and the signing of Magna Carta, Henry VIII founding the Anglican church, the first English colonies in the new world, the civil war between cavaliers and roundheads, the French and Indian War, the War of 1812, and so on. Such events would be significant in shaping the population of white Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) who make up the majority of Americans today.
Could Biden or any other person in his administration give such a 30 minute lecture, let alone from memory? Maybe, but probably not.
Some other thoughts:
Putin expressed his frustration that he literally does not know who to talk to in the US government, and that reflects American anxieties that our “democracy” is a masquerade for a persistent state of technocrats who rule and make all the decisions in the background. The main problem with this is that these shadowy technocrats buried in the US capitol and the Pentagon are near-impossible for American citizens or foreign leaders alike to access properly. Tucker seemed confused about Putin’s statement about joining NATO but I think it is important. It doesn’t actually matter if Russia would have decided on joining NATO or not. The point is that Putin asked Clinton, received a “no” for an answer, but that answer wasn’t coming from Clinton, it was coming from people behind Clinton who were making all the decisions, but these technocrats were inaccessible to Putin. This point was further reinforced by the conversation regarding US-sponsored violent in the Norther Caucasus. The CIA told their Russian counterparts in no uncertain terms that these ambitions to stir up unrest served the interests of the US government, regardless of what our president happened to say.
American corporate media took this last point personally, as demonstrated by this article on CNN:
In some cases, Carlson even fed into Putin’s narratives. For instance, Putin advanced an absurd deep state-style conspiracy theory that the U.S. government is not controlled by its elected leaders but by unelected powers at the Central Intelligence Agency who direct the president like a puppet from the shadows.
“So, twice you’ve described US presidents making decisions and then being undercut by their agency heads,” Carlson said after Putin made the assertion, earnestly summing up the Russian leader’s mendacious narrative. “So it sounds like you’re describing a system that’s not run by the people who are elected, in your telling?”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Putin replied.
Carlson never followed up to challenge the absurdity.
Tucker brought up his usual dislike of China and I’m glad that Putin shut this down as thoroughly as he did. This is also beneficial for right-leaning Americans who admire or at least respect Putin. Russia has a 1,000 km border with China and have coexisted for centuries. If Russia can do it, then the USA can too and there’s no need for saber-rattling.
Naturally, CNN doesn’t bother to explain why Putin was wrong or try to disprove him. They just dismiss the whole affair as a conspiracy theory, which is pretty solid evidence that what Putin said was 100% true.
One attribute of this interview that is very clear just from watching it was that there was no prior discussion of the topics or specific questions to be asked. There could be any number of reasons for this (or no reason at all), but I think it is deliberate. In my previous post I brought up the possibility of someone wanting to prosecute Tucker under the Espionage Act, and the communications leading up to the interview were one of the exact pieces of evidence that was mentioned. I am sure Tucker’s interview came only after long consultations with lawyers, and it was shaped to make prosecution as unlikely and difficult as possible. Evan Gershkovich also came up in discussion, and that might have been part of the argument Tucker would make to prove that his Putin interview had good intentions. Speaking of Gershkovich, I find it interesting that Tucker spent a fairly large amount of time on the topic of his detainment, which to me suggests that Tucker is genuinely concerned about him. However, Putin’s overall point on the matter was correct. Prisoner negotiations tend to go a lot more smoothly when they’re not sensationalized in the media and used as political fodder, which Biden has insisted on doing with every single detained American who checks the right diversity boxes.
The most important question is also the most difficult one. What will be the short and long term impacts of the interview? I do not think this will have any impact on opposing camps in the US political establishment who have already made up their minds on the Ukraine issue. But this will influence public opinion. For millions of American citizens, this is the first time in their lives they’ve heard the unadulterated Russian perspective, and that is in of itself significant. The interview has over 100 million views (and the exact number is hard to count because it has been shared so far and wide), and is already being translated into other languages and broken up into digestible sound bytes for people not interested in watching the whole video. And this is part of the reason I think it was good for Putin to focus on such broad historical topics because that makes the video evergreen, it will still be relevant in 5 years even if the conflict in Ukraine has already ended. This will likely be remembered as one of the most significant interviews in the first half of the 21st Century.
Ian Kummer
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IIRC Putin giving history lessons is a regular thing with him. I wish our leaders were as capable
Hi Rando, I am thinking of a separate post just for memes resulting from this.
If you allow, a short summary of President Putin’s claims that led to smo. And this is a set of problems that have been growing like a snowball since the collapse of the union. I would like to note that everything that was said is truthful and easy to verify, however, of course, Vladimir Vladimirovich is somewhat disingenuous or does not say enough at some points. And this is quite normal, because he is a politician. These are the reasons: 1) the constant expansion of NATO to the east (which should not have happened according to verbal agreements) 2) the announcement of readiness to accept Ukraine into NATO 3) the nurturing, legitimization and glorification of neo-nationalist movements and even military units 4) the oppression of the Russian language and Russian-speaking population due to growing nationalism (taking into account the fact that the overwhelming number of citizens are Russian-speaking) 5) signing of European integration, which threatened to open free access to our market for the flow of goods from Europe, because at that time there was a single customs zone 6) a bloody coup d’etat and the beginning of preparations and implementation of a military operation to suppress those who disagreed with this coup (Odessa, Crimea, Eastern regions) 7) flooding of the territory of Ukraine (especially border zones) with military bases with foreign instructors and military equipment, essentially a threat to Russia’s national security 8) refusal to implement the signed Minsk 2 peace agreement 9) continuous shelling of civilians in Donbass. The goals are clear and do not change – demilitarization and denazification. And these are absolutely truthful attitudes. There are others, and thinking people, especially in the field of macroeconomics, know where they stand. If you ask the question why Germany suffers such humiliation from its main strategic partner (meaning the blow of the northern streams and liquefied gas in the sky high prices), the answer cannot be found on the surface. And I think it can be formulated this way: we don’t want cheap (gas and oil), we want free. It’s no secret that behind the most beautiful thoughts, ideas and events there will always be money. And even if money is not the goal itself, the need for economic security and sovereignty determines almost any foreign policy steps of the state. And the complete capture of Ukraine into the orbit of influence of the United States and the European Union is precisely a threat to Russia’s economic security. I don’t agree with everything, however, a general understanding of the economic background can be found here: https://youtu.be/If61baWF4GE?si=nxfajObBKVwLhpFl
Feedback and personal takes are always welcome here! Thank you!
I enjoyed the history part and found the bit about Poland prior to WW2 particularly interesting. I knew they and the Romanians had prevented the Soviet attempts to build a coalition to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938 and that they had taken a chunk of territory near Cieszyn, mainly inhabited by Poles, but I was not aware of the way Poland used Chamberlain’s promise of support to escalate things with Germany.
I did a course on the religions of Russia a few years ago and, even coming from a Russian Studies background, I was surprised at the extent to which the Roman Catholic church’s negative, crusading, attitude to Orthodoxy found a willing partner in Polish policy and national feeling to cause no end of problems for Russia across the centuries. Growing up in the UK, Poland was always portrayed as the victim, but it is interesting to see the Polish state through Putin’s eyes as, at the very least, eternal troublemakers. But given what has transpired, he’s probably thinking the same about the UK.
I’m working on a blog covering Russian history (https://ratemytsar.wordpress.com) and I’ve only got a century and a bit in from Rurik in a couple of months, so I’m impressed with Putin’s succinctness in fitting everything in 25 minutes. He missed a lot of interesting stuff out, though.
I wonder, though, if any normies will be listening. I get the impression Tucker Carlson has a particular, fairly partisan audience in the USA, who would be sympathetic to the idea that Obama and Biden have messed everything up. I’m not sure people who listen to the mainstream in the west will even have the capability to appreciate the substance of the interview, as they are coming from an environment where everything both Putin and Carlson say is immediately condemned as misinformation and lies. Why listen to two liars lie for two hours, when you can read a brief pro-NATO “debunking” and condemnation in two minutes?
Was this part of the CNN story, or is that your words?
“…Tucker brought up his usual dislike of China and I’m glad that Putin shut this down as thoroughly as he did. This is also beneficial for right-leaning Americans who admire or at least respect Putin. Russia has a 1,000 km border with China and have coexisted for centuries. If Russia can do it, then the USA can too and there’s no need for saber-rattling…
Great catch and thanks for pointing it out, I fixed this.
Great, now it makes more sense. Because CNN wouldn’t say that.
I don’t know if you want to notify the other sites that have republished your article, because I came here from the Greanville Post and they still have your original formatting.
Hey Ian! Several thoughts about the Putin/Carlson chat:
One, it made a lot more sense to me when I READ the transcript instead of listening to the interview. I made it through the first 12 minutes of the video but I got lost in the intricacies around the time Rurik came up. Dense information does not get absorbed as well through the ears vs. the eyes. With me, at least.
I had seen a lot of what Putin laid out, explained by a Yale professor named Tim Snyder. (A total Ukro-symp svidomite who gave a series of lectures on Kievan history not long after the war started. I never would have heard of Snyder except he was cited by a guy who I was sparring with over the war at a lunch event. He could not BELIEVE that anyone would support the Russian side. To him, it was like hearing someone say “it’s OK for Cathoholic [sic] priests to bugger altar boys.” Whenever I run into someone who has a strong opinion opposite to mine, and who seems to have at least SOME facts to back their viewpoint, I always ask “Where do you get your information?” He suggested Snyder, who wasn’t worth the time I spent listening to some of the lectures at 1.5X speed. At least I now know where that camp is coming from.) Anyway, reading Putin’s version was like the 180-degree opposite of this Snyder fellow. That’s 360 degrees in Baerbock geometry. Same facts, different meaning. I could not have made the comparison in my head if I was trying to follow along at the speed of speech.
That might have been why Carlson looked puzzled during the historical discourse. Too fast to follow. I’ve also read that the simultaneous-translation nature of the interpretation adds a level of confusion for the listener. The Big Important Guy is sitting in front of Tuck, he’s watching the Big Important Mouth moving, but at the same time he’s having to divert his attention to the voice speaking in his ear. That perhaps explains Carlson’s cow-like look. I don’t like the guy, thought he was a smarmy frat-boy weenie even before John Stewart (back when he was funny) ripped Carlson a new one on CNN “Crossfire” in 2004. I’ll give him props for doing with Putin what the lickspittle “liberal” media didn’t have the balls to try, though.
Secondly, you, and Putin, overlook one big thing when you wonder “who in the American government is REALLY making the decisions?” Maybe it’s not the GOVERNMENT! At least not completely. Maybe (NOT maybe) it’s CORPORATIONS! Money, not ideology or “what’s best for the population” is what drives actions in Corpoworld. Expanding NATO and the EU eastward makes a lot of sense if you look at it through a lens of more customers to buy weapons; more worker bees to enlist as debt slaves for the money that Westie banks loan them.
Sure, it’s government officials making the speeches and signing the decrees for the stuff that leaves Putin scratching his head. Only, the hand that’s pulling their strings belongs to someone wearing a business suit, not an ID badge issued by some .gov agency. The business-suiter is not on the floor of the legislature when the vote is taken, or in the bureaucratic office where the decree is drafted. However, the Suit handed out the bribes, disguised as “campaign contributions,” that the ID-badger used to buy the misleading propaganda which convinced the sheepovoters to elect him. And the Badger only appointed officials who aligned with the Suit’s way of thinking. The “C” in “CIA” could be viewed as standing for “Corpo”…
I could go on, except I write too much. No point sub-blogging your blog! I’m glad personal takes are welcome. But in the interest of politness, there are limits.
Well there’s a saying that the USA is not a real country, it’s several corporations in a trenchcoat, and I think that applies here.