Commentary
Like a frenzy of sharks mobbing their prey, liberals have descended on Tucker Carlson, the journalist who dared to inject himself into their ongoing Russian narrative.
Coinciding with the release of Mr. Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, one newspaper asked readers: “Tucker Carlson is back in the limelight for all the wrong reasons. But where has he been?” They went on to say that, “Anyone not glued to the internet in the intervening time between his departure from Fox News and landing at the steps of the Kremlin may be wondering where Carlson has been all this time.”
Of course, none of his 12+ million followers on the social media platform X have been wondering where he’s been. Far from falling into obscurity after leaving Fox News, Tucker Carlson has continued to make a name for himself as one of the leading conservative voices of the 21st century. And it’s driving liberals crazy. The Feb. 8 Vladimir Putin interview has triggered brutal journalistic attacks usually reserved for President Donald Trump. Why? Because they thought they had the market cornered on everything Russian.
The liberals have concocted and controlled their own Russian narrative since late 2016, immediately after being blindsided by the victory of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. On Dec. 9 of that year, President Barack Obama instructed the intelligence community to produce a report assessing Russian activities and interference in U.S. elections. After that, as Truth Over News reported, “The actions by Obama, Brennan, the intelligence community, and the rest of the DC establishment to stain Trump’s presidency with claims of Russian collusion were remarkably successful.” Worse yet, it may have been Joe Biden’s actions in Ukraine that led to the Russiagate hoax to begin with, as outlined in “Real Origins of Russiagate Revealed.”
Before that, progressives thought Russia was some kind of leftover Reagan thing, like a remnant from the Berlin Wall. (Who can forget 2012, when President Obama upbraided Mitt Romney for saying Russia was the greatest geopolitical threat to America? In reminding him that the Cold War had been over for 20 years, Mr. Obama quipped, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”)
But after an election that didn’t go the way they wanted in 2016, Russia seemed to be an answer to Democrat’s prayers. As President Trump said, “We first went through Russia, Russia, Russia. It was all [expletive]. We then went through the Mueller report, and they should have come back one day later. They didn’t, they came back two years later. After lives were ruined. After people went bankrupt ...”
Then, according to Mr. Carlson, the Biden administration “illegally spied on our text messages and then leaked the contents to their servants in the news media.” He said they did this to stop an interview he’d planned with Mr. Putin. (If one reads the House of Representatives report on “The Weaponization of CISA,” or considers the current probe into the DOJ’s attempts to spy on Congress, his claims hardly seem far-fetched.) Mr. Carlson is “pretty certain” they spied on him again last month, but went ahead with the interview anyway.
Since the interview, progressive media can’t help treating even the tiniest things Tucker-related with contempt. In a short video posted to his website titled “The Moscow Grocery Store,” his brief comment on the Aldi-style shopping cart received global mockery: “Tucker Carlson gets roasted for praising decades-old shopping cart tech in Russia” and “Tucker Carlson mocked over fawning praise for Russian shopping trolleys.” Everyone seemed to ignore the main point of his video, which was: “If you take people’s standard of living and you tank it through filth and crime and inflation, and they literally can’t buy the groceries they want, at that point maybe it matters less what you say or whether you’re a good person or bad person, you’re wrecking people’s lives and their country. And that’s what our leaders have done to us.”
Another takeaway from Mr. Carlson’s grocery store visit? Sanctions don’t work.
Shopping cart derision is one thing, but now the media are linking the death of activist Alexei Navalny with Tucker Carlson, and it’s truly disgusting.
One headline reads, “Putin’s Pals Link Death of Alexei Navalny to Tucker Carlson Interview.” The article quotes writer and Stalin apologist Nikolai Starikov from a post he made on Telegram saying, “Navalny departed from life at a very convenient time for the Western puppeteers.” It says he then “argued that this may have been done to undermine the PR effect of Carlson’s interview and to prompt the U.S. Congress to approve the aid to Ukraine. Starikov claimed that Navalny’s wife Yulia is at the Munich Security Conference on the same day, which is ‘part of the plan.’”
It’s an interesting theory, but hardly a good source. The article is preceded by a photomontage showing the faces of Mr. Carlson, Mr. Putin, and Mr. Navalny together. And the conspiracy begins.
It’s noteworthy that the author of that article has said that for years she’s “been writing about Russia’s preoccupation with Tucker Carlson and the enormous value of his propaganda for the Kremlin.” A link to a YouTube video claims to expose “Russia’s Tuckermania through the years.”
Supposed Russian preoccupation with Mr. Carlson apparently did not extend to his recent visit, however, with one mainstream news outlet saying “Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview was a TV turn-off for Russians,” claiming it was a ratings flop that failed to crack the top-10 most-watched programs.
Everyone’s in such a rush to blame Mr. Carlson for something, anything, they can’t even get their stories straight.
The truth is that generations born since the fall of the Berlin Wall have no idea what motivated Republican President Ronald Reagan to forcefully call for its demolition. There’s a whole history there that’s no longer being taught. That’s how we ended up in 2024 with ideologically conservative, patriotic Americans like President Trump and Tucker Carlson being framed as sympathetic to dictators. There must be some kind of revolutionary, intellectual counteroffensive to this conflation of credos being projected onto conservatives by liberals and their lapdog media.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
