on putin, tucker and the american right

In case you didn't hear, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been in Russia this week preparing for an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

For days, Carlson and his fans touted his forthcoming interview with Putin as a breakthrough moment for the “untold” story of the origins of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Instead, what the blundering right-wing propagandist got was the rambling, antagonistic Putin that the shallow Russophilia of the modern American right deserves.

Throughout the course of a 2-hour interview, which Carlson released on his website and “X” (formerly Twitter) last night, Putin belittles his interviewer, eschewing bonding with the propagandist over the various indignities of Western culture in favor of a false imperialist narrative of Russian and Ukrainian history that should have surprised almost no one.

For those who refrained from subjecting themselves to the full two hours, here’s a summary.

At the start of the interview, Putin dives into a 30-minute-long history lesson detailing his irredentist vision that sees Russia as the sole heir to the Kyivan Rus’, a one-time state and subsequent group of principalities that existed between the late 9^th and 13^th centuries. Both Russia and Ukraine have laid claim to Rus’ as their cultural and political ancestor.

To Carlson’s confusion, Putin name drops a slew of now long-dead leaders. He brings up Yaroslav the Wise, the Grand Prince of the Kyivan Rus’ from 1019 to 1054. At one point, to Carlson’s confusion, Putin presents a collection of letters from Bohdan Khmelnytsky, a Cossack leader who led a rebellion against Polish leaders in the mid-1600s that resulted in the formation of an independent Cossack state in Ukraine. He hints at the Union of Brest, an agreement in the late 1500s that brought some Eastern Orthodox Churches under the pope’s authority, resulting in the eventual formation of the Uniate Church.

Carlson interrupts Putin at a few points throughout his history lesson. In response, Putin expresses frustration. He reminds Carlson that he said at the start of the interview that he wanted a “serious conversation.” Carlson doesn’t understand Putin’s line of thought. He raises, repeatedly, that he doesn’t understand why Putin’s foray into his propagandistic narrative of the formation of the Russian state is relevant. On several occasions, Carlson cocks his head, furrows his brow. He stares, clearly frustrated, at the Russian leader.

Putin presents a litany of grievances against the West, and the United States in particular, eventually. His answer to Carlson’s first question — why he invaded Ukraine in the first place — is not what the propagandist expected. Instead, it's a history lesson to establish Ukraine as not just an imagined national community, in contrast to Russia, but a fake one. To any observer of U.S.-Russia relations, the extended historical argument should come as no surprise. Nevertheless, Carlson stumbles, asking why the Russian leader didn’t make such an argument until 2022, when Russia conducted its full-scale invasion. (Note: Putin has.)

It isn’t worth getting into the rest too deeply. Putin plays a few hits. The only way to end the war is the “prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazism.” (He doesn’t define it.) He complains about NATO. He blamed Poland, not Hitler, for starting World War II. He gripes about the CIA, albeit in part to turn it back into a dig at Carlson.

“A coup d’etat was committed [in Ukraine]… With the backing of CIA, of course. The organization that you wanted to join back in the day, I understand. We should thank God they didn’t let you in. Although it is a serious organization, I understand,” Putin told Carlson. 

By the end of the interview, it’s clear that Carlson didn’t get what he wanted. Nevertheless, the online right has still scrambled to milk the interview for enough “BASED PUTIN!!!!111” propaganda to continue to justify their obsession with Putin. He “loves his country.” He can talk about history. He brought up the Orthodox Church. He “knows things that we do not know.” (Whatever the fuck that means.)

These reactions are telling in their vacuousness. There are some exceptions, but by and large, the American right has made it clear time and time again that they see Russia as merely as a tool. It's a vessel for containing their various grievances against Western liberalism.

Pro-Kremlin ideologues have leaned into this image abroad, nurturing it through various transnational cooperation efforts. But it's also a mirror, as I've argued before. They see Russia primarily through the lens of Putin's conservative turn, not as a country in and of itself.

In the end, it’s the interview that the American right deserves. Carlson’s interview subject insults and belittles him. Putin mocks his disinterest in what the Russian leader perceives as his country's history. Nationalists hate it when others don't bother to understand them while also operating under the assumption that no one from other countries truly can, after all. In the end, Carlson's efforts to get Putin to throw an olive branch to bloviating red-pilled morons obsessed with “cancel culture” go largely unfulfilled. Putin used Carlson, as he's used others before.

It's just that his American fans are either too ignorant or unwilling to see that.