Tucker Carlson and his company are denying reports from Newsweek and others that the former Fox News host has started a program airing exclusively on Russian Television. The show in question has been heavily promoted on Russian media and features current episodes of Carlson’s show with a Russian translator speaking over it.
While the story now appears to be false, it’s not a far stretch due to Tucker’s obsession with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. Tucker Carlson infamously went to Moscow and gave Vladirimre Putin a soft interview with the exception of one pressing question about WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich. From there, Carlson went on an oddly propagandistic tour of the country praising everything from its subway system to its grocery stores.
Tucker Carlson’s post-Fox tenure is emblematic of larger issues that plague the right. If you watch Tucker’s show, you will be hard-pressed to find favorable news about America or American policy. He extolls the virtues of places like Russia and China while floating wild conspiracy theories about the Hamas attacks of October 7th. He allows people like Marjorie Taylor Greene to claim that Mike Johnson is being blackmailed by the Democrats and interviews fringe doctors who suggest that Lymes disease was created as a bioweapon.
I’m not sure when it happened, but Tucker and many others on the right became so disillusioned by the political process that they decided to fight the left on every conceivable issue. Many of these on the right claim that we have to fight as angrily and nastily as the left in order to beat them. But I am old enough to remember when a man named Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. I remember Brian Kemp getting elected on conservative principles and then re-elected by a landslide thanks to his policy positions.
These Republicans who claim the right has to be as nasty and vitriolic as the left in order to win seemingly forget that purple states like Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio aren’t really that purple anymore. They forget that the United States has a Surpeme Court more ideologically conservative than at any point in recent history. As big cities continue to be overrun by crime, Soros-backed District Attornies are beginning to lose races because Black and Hispanic families are fed up with the crime and voting Republican.
This doomsday attitude on the right willfully ignores the events of very recent history. America is not perfect, but by all means, move to Moscow and enjoy the political repression and average annual salary of $14,000.
