Tucker Carlson has offered his reflections on his interview with Vladimir Putin, suggesting the Russian leader is “smart” but struggled to present his case coherently.
Recording his thoughts in the immediate aftermath of the interview in a Kremlin anteroom, Carlson expressed surprise at Putin having “launched into an extremely detailed history going back to the 9th century” when he asked the Russian leader why he had invaded Ukraine, adding that it had “annoyed” him.
Speaking in his hotel room later the same night, Carlson offered further reflections, saying the Russian was “not good at explaining himself.”
“He’s smart, there’s no question about that, but he’s clearly spending a lot of time in a world where he doesn’t have to explain himself,” Carlson said.
“He didn’t lay out his case very coherently, though if you listen carefully… a couple of things rose to the surface,” he said, referring to Putin’s stance on post Cold War Russo-U.S. relations.
Carlson said it was his own view that Russia “is not an expansionist power,” not least because it needs no additional natural resources and is already “too big already” for its population.
Carlson also expressed some surprise that Putin “was willing to admit that he wants a peace deal in Ukraine, and sort of give it away.”
“Maybe he’s lying in ways I didn’t perceive, but he kept saying it, and I don’t know why he would say it if he didn’t mean it. And of course, there is, as a matter of fact, evidence overwhelming that there was a peace deal… that the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson, scuttled on behalf of the Biden administration,” Carlson recalled.
