Why the Kremlin Opened Its Doors to Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson finally has his white whale. On Tuesday, the former Fox News host announced that he’d soon be recording an interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The interview is the first that Putin has granted to a Western media figure since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago, a fact that Carlson touted in the video he released to tease the meeting. In truth, many Western journalists have requested interviews with Putin to no avail, presumably because they would challenge a leader accustomed to interviews with propagandists on the Kremlin’s payroll. 

Carlson, meanwhile, has built his post-television brand on friendly sit-downs with far-right and authoritarian leaders worldwide. “[American] media outlets are corrupt,” he said in the teaser video. “At the same time our politicians and media outlets have been…promoting [Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy] like he’s a new consumer brand,” he continued, “not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict: Vladimir Putin.”

Carlson’s suggestion that Western journalists are somehow incurious about reporting from Russia is easily disproved by the case of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was arrested in Yekaterinburg last March on dubious espionage charges. He remains behind bars. Many foreign journalists were also forced out of or banned from the country as part of Russia’s response to Western sanctions. In a post on X, CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour wrote, “It’s absurd — we’ll continue to ask for an interview, just as we have for years now.”

Although he was no doubt partially responsible for Carlson’s visit, even Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov had to counter Carlson’s claim. “Mr. Carlson is wrong,” he said during a Wednesday presser. “We receive a lot of applications for interviews with the president.” However, the requests from prominent Western outlets have all been rejected, Peskov explained, as there would be “no benefit in giving them interviews.”

Why the Kremlin would open its doors to Carlson is eminently clear: He has opposed US aid to Kyiv and is arguably more responsible than any other American for exciting anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia sentiment among the “America First,” Trump-aligned wing of the Republican Party. In Carlson’s telling, Putin’s Russia is a defender of Christendom, standing steadfastly against the anti-Christian West.

Carlson has also been sympathetic to Putin throughout his war with Ukraine, often producing monologues so favorable to Russia that its state-run outlets translate and rebroadcast them. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a leaked Kremlin memo stated that it was essential to air “broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson.” Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov even condemned Carlson’s firing from Fox News last year, falsely suggesting that it amounted to a violation of the First Amendment.

Peskov all but acknowledged this relationship when explaining why the Kremlin approved the interview, which reportedly could air on Thursday. Carlson’s “position” on Russia, Peskov noted, is “different from” that of other “Anglo-Saxon media.” Indeed, while discussing Russo-Ukrainian tensions in 2019, Carlson declared on Fox News: “Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am.”

The list of other authoritarian leaders whom Carlson has interviewed includes Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán; El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele; Polish president Andrzej Duda; and Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who allegedly orchestrated a failed self-coup last year.