Tucker Carlson is one of the reasons I have lost so much respect for a large part of the American public. Not simply because he exists, but because millions of people willingly treat this grotesque propagandist as some kind of fearless truth-teller.
On Ukraine, he has spent years doing the Kremlin’s work for free, or at least pretending it is free. He downplays Russian aggression, strips Ukraine of any agency, blames NATO and Washington for a war Putin chose to launch, and presents every Ukrainian flaw as proof that the country deserves to be abandoned.
Then he went to Moscow, sat in front of Putin like an awestruck intern, and gave him hours to vomit historical revisionism and imperial propaganda with barely any serious challenge. Afterwards he wandered around Russian supermarkets and metro stations acting as if clean floors and cheap bread had disproved dictatorship, repression and war crimes.
The entire act is a grift built on cynicism. He tells gullible Americans that everyone is lying except him, that the aggressor is the victim, and that treachery is courage as long as it is packaged as anti-establishment rebellion.
He is not a brave dissident. He is a smug, dishonest salesman who discovered that laundering Kremlin propaganda is extremely profitable when your audience is desperate to feel smarter than everyone else.