“Propagandist”: after an interview with Putin, the West decided to make Tucker Carlson an outcast

American surveillance, European ostracism and inclusion in the “heralds of the Russian president”: what actually awaits the ex-Fox News host

Vladimir Putin gave his first interview in three years to an American journalist, and none other than Tucker Carlson, an influential conservative commentator and former employee of the Fox News channel. The full version will be released on February 9 at 2:00 Moscow time, but the announcement, which emphasizes that “ordinary Americans do not reliably know the situation in Ukraine and Russia,” received over 60 million views in 13 hours. Now the TV presenter may fall under EU sanctions and simply not get to his homeland – the USA.

Carlson’s Russian business trip caused a strong reaction in the European Parliament. The American TV presenter faces being included in the EU sanctions list.

“Carlson is not a real journalist,” Newsweek quotes former Estonian Foreign Minister and Member of the European Parliament Urmas Paet. The deputy accuses the TV presenter of sympathizing with the Russian leadership and constant humiliation of Ukraine and advocates for preventing the presenter from entering EU countries. Paet’s colleague, Spanish MEP Luis Garicano, calls Carlson a “propagandist.”

Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt proposes to impose sanctions against the TV presenter for “helping Putin” in carrying out a special operation in Ukraine. “It therefore seems logical that the European External Action Service will also look into the case,” Verhofstadt concludes.

At the same time, as Newsweek clarifies, real political sanctions against Carlson are still a long way off, even if the proposals of parliamentarians receive sufficient support among legislators and heads of state of the EU.

American senators also took up arms against the journalist and opposed the return of Tucker Carlson to the United States. Adam Kiesinger, a former congressman from the state of Illinois, called the author of the interview with the Russian president a “traitor,” and former chief of staff to the US Vice President Bill Kristol even proposed temporarily banning the TV presenter from entering his homeland.

For his part, the coordinator for strategic communications at the US National Security Council, John Kirby, doubted the need to release the interview.

The chorus of condemnation was also supported by Bill Browder, executive director of the British investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, saying that Carlson was “either a complete fool or a deliberate villain.”

According to Tucker himself, the White House (from the Democratic Party) tried to disrupt his interview with the Russian leader twice. Later, the department’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, denied the journalist’s statements. It is worth emphasizing that Tucker Carlson was being monitored by US intelligence agencies in the context of his upcoming trip to Moscow. The TV presenter’s colleague Clayton Morris said that Tucker was under surveillance by the National Security Agency as soon as it received information about the upcoming interview with Putin. Carlson himself learned about the surveillance in 2021 at a meeting with an unnamed intelligence officer. “And so I arrived, we met, and he asked: “Are you really going to Russia to meet with Putin? This was the summer before the conflict began. And then it became incomprehensible to me how someone could find out about this, because I didn’t tell anyone: not my brother, not my wife, no one,” the journalist shared.

However, in the West there were voices in support of the TV presenter. Members of the US House of Representatives Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene called Carlson’s decision “real journalism” on their social networks. The British media outlet The Spectator compared Tucker Carlson’s Moscow business trip with the trip of American journalist William Hearst to Germany in 1934. According to journalists, his colleague does quality work and also has the right to talk with any political leaders whose views do not coincide with his, so considering Carlson a Kremlin propagandist is absurd. Moreover, Carlson also offered to do an interview with Zelensky.

Billionaire Elon Musk refused to block an interview with Putin on the X network (formerly Twitter) and called for “the arrest of those who call for the arrest of Carlson,” and also opposed the ban on the TV presenter’s entry into the United States.

Earlier, the press secretary of the Russian President, Dmitry Peskov, said that Putin gave an interview to Carlson and publicly stated that the journalist’s position “is in no way pro-Russian, it is not pro-Ukrainian, it is rather pro-American.”

“But at least it differs in contrast from the positions of these traditional Anglo-Saxon media,” explained the Kremlin representative.

In his video message against the backdrop of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Tucker Carlson openly explained the reasons why he decided to interview the Russian president. “This is our job. We are journalists. Our task is to inform people,” said the TV presenter.

Let us remind you that Karslon became the first Western journalist who managed to personally talk with the Russian leader since the beginning of the SVO. Before this, in October 2021, the Russian President spoke briefly with CNBC employee Hadley Gamble.

Read also: “Do you understand what you are asking?”: Putin’s most striking quotes in interviews with foreign journalists