Tucker Carlson

Portrait of a frozen food heir and conservative pundit-turned Putin apologist

(Image came from Twitter/X. Artist unknown.)

If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.

This week eyebrows were raised in the Western world when former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson was seen in Moscow. Carlson had frequently been expressing admiration for Vladimir Putin and giving his opinions on why he thinks that Russia was right in invading Ukraine. Carlson has been so openly adoring of Putin that the Kremlin has told its propagandists that it is “essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson.” Here is a compilation of Russian propagandists praising Carlson with English subtitles.

Carlson's arrival in Moscow fueled speculations as to whether he would meet with Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin announced that Carlson was indeed meeting with Vladimir Putin.

Tucker Carlson had not only interviewed Vladimir Putin but Carlson has released that interview online last night. You can now view it online on Twitter/X. If you’re not on Twitter/X you can also view that interview on the Tucker Carlson Network website. But be forewarned—That interview lasts two hours. That's right, two hours of Putin using his own unique interpretation of history to justify why he felt it was necessary for Russia to invade Ukraine. If you can't stomach sitting through that two-hour interview, you can read the recap either on Axios, NPR, or Wikipedia.

That interview also received its share of reviews—mostly negative. Here are a few headlines:

Putin likely chose Tucker Carlson because of his ignorance of Russia, and it showed

Carlson's interview of Putin a piece of propaganda

Putin Nearly Bores Tucker Carlson to Death With Two-Hour History Lesson

Putin's History Lesson for Tucker Carlson Sparks Avalanche of Jokes, Memes

This post on Twitter/X is probably my favorite review: “So hi, Tucker Carlson fans. I have to admit this was an amazing interview. Tucker masterfully showed what a delusional fuck Vladimir Putin is. From brilliant choice to shut up and let the idiot monologue to color correction - bravo - these red eyes. Genius!!”

This interview is extraordinary because, for the past few years, Vladimir Putin has routinely rejected interview requests from other Western journalists but he decided to sit down for an interview with Tucker Carlson because, in the Kremlin's own words, Carlson is different and special.

Tucker Carlson's latest gig has been compared to New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, who was the bureau chief in Moscow from 1922 to 1936. Duranty provided glowing accounts of the Soviet Communist government's Five-Year Plan and he was granted an exclusive interview with Joseph Stalin. Duranty ended up ignoring the less-admired parts of Stalin's rule, such as the Holodomor. Duranty's reporting, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, would later be described as rehashed Soviet propaganda at odds with the experiences of the people of the Russian and Soviet empires.

Additionally there is speculation that the interview with Putin has been timed to inflict maximum damage on US support for Ukraine.

Tucker Carlson may claim that he only interviewed Vladimir Putin because he is a journalist but in 2020 a lawyer for Carlson's then-employer, Fox News, said in a courtroom that you really can't literally believe everything that Carlson said on his old Fox News show.

(Graphic courtesy of UA Memes Forces.)

It's been a long strange trip for Tucker Carlson to go from a typical television conservative pundit to being someone that you literally can't believe everything he says on the air to being a blatant Kremlin propagandist whose loyalty lies more with Vladimir Putin and Russia than with America.

There's literally nothing in Carlson's background that would predict how he would end up. According to the Wikipedia, he was born in 1969 in San Francisco. His father, Dick Carlson, is a former gonzo journalist who later became the director of the Voice of America, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, US ambassador to the Seychelles, and the director at the lobbying firm Policy Impact Strategic Communications. His mother, Lisa McNear Lombardi, was an artist who came from one of San Francisco's wealthiest families.

His parents’ marriage broke up when he was six and his father took custody of Tucker and his brother Buckley. His mother moved to France and she never saw either of her two sons again.

This Business Insider article takes a look at Lisa McNear Lombardi's post-divorce life while featuring pictures of her artwork. Lisa McNear Lombardi later moved to Los Angeles where she befriended Mo McDermott, a British sculptor and longtime assistant to famed contemporary artist David Hockney. The pair frequently collaborated on various projects until his death from liver failure due to excess alcohol consumption in 1988. In 1989 she married British painter Michael Vaughan and they would split their time between the Pyrenees of France and South Carolina's Sea Islands until her death from cancer in 2011. It was said that she had never once talked about either of her two sons to friends and acquaintances.

In 1979 Dick Carlson married Patricia Caroline Swanson, whose family founded Swanson's frozen foods. She legally adopted Tucker and Buckley, which made them heirs to the Swanson family fortune.

Tucker Carlson attended Trinity College but failed to earn enough credits to graduate. After college he attempted to join the CIA but he was rejected. He then began a journalism career when he worked as a fact-checker for a conservative publication called Policy Review. Over time he began to work as a columnist for New York and Reader's Digest while writing freelance articles for a wide variety of publications like Esquire, Slate, The Weekly Standard, The New York Times Magazine, The Daily Beast, and The Wall Street Journal.

In 2000 Carlson began his television career with CNN where he hosted the short-lived The Spin Room. He went on to becoming the co-host of Crossfire, which was supposed to be a debate show between a liberal and a conservative. In 2004 comedian Jon Stewart, who was the then-host of The Daily Show, appeared on Crossfire where he humiliated the co-hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala.

A few months after that episode aired Crossfire was canceled and Carlson was let go from CNN.

From 2004-2005 Carlson had a show on PBS called Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, which ran concurrently with CNN's Crossfire. Carlson decided to leave that show after a year so he could focus on his new post-CNN job.

In 2005 Tucker Carlson was hired by MSNBC where he initially was given his own show, Tucker. It was canceled in 2008 due to low ratings and Carlson was let go from the network.

In 2006 Carlson appeared as a contestant on the third season of Dancing With the Stars. He was voted off the show after the first episode of the season and this video shows why.

Ironically the future president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, also appeared in his country's version of Dancing With the Stars in the same year that Carlson did in the US. Unlike Carlson, Zelenskyy won that season. Just comparing this video clip of Zelenskyy’s performances (he was able to progress to later rounds, unlike Carlson) with Carlson's only lackluster performance shows why it's not surprising that Zelenskyy won that season.

Could it be possible that one of the reasons why Tucker Carlson is so supportive of Vladimir Putin is because he's secretly jealous of Volodymyr Zelenskyy being more successful on Dancing With the Stars than he ever was? 🤔

In 2009 Carlson was hired by Fox News where he was eventually given his own prime time show, Tucker Carlson Tonight.

In 2010 Carlson co-founded a new political news site called The Daily Caller and he served as the site's editor-in-chief. In 2020 he sold his one-third stake in the site to one of his partners and he left the site.

It was his Fox News gig where Carlson reached new levels of infamy. Among them was Carlson's strange two-year obsession with the design of the M&Ms cartoon characters. He was worried about the sexiness of cartoon characters who were shaped like the M&Ms chocolate candy and were designed to encourage people to buy candy. Last year I made a video compilation of Carlson's bizarre two-year obsession with the sexiness of candy-shaped cartoon characters that were originally designed to sell candy. You just can't make this stuff up!

When Tucker Carlson began to praise Vladimir Putin in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on his own show, the Kremlin urged the Russian media to start using clips from Carlson's Fox News show as much as possible.

Tucker Carlson was the only person on mainstream television who actually interviewed the Gen Z Lord Haw-Haw Jackson Hinkle on his Fox News show just a few months before Carlson's show was canceled.

When Carlson was let go from Fox News last year, he admitted that his show on that network was a total scam. What prompted his departure was the lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems filed against Fox News for spreading the lie that the 2020 election was rigged. Tucker Carlson had been among those Fox News personalities who echoed Donald Trump's claim that the voting was rigged. As a result of the Dominion lawsuit, this 2020 text message that Carson sent to a colleague came to light where Carlson admitted that he “passionately hated” Donald Trump.

Another reason why Carlson left Fox News was because his former producer Abby Grossberg had won a $12 million lawsuit against Fox News claiming that Carlson had fostered a hostile work environment that included sexism and antisemitism.

Soon after he left Fox News he began his own show on Twitter/X. He later created his own Tucker Carlson Network website and you can now see his two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin on both sites.

While Tucker Carlson uses the excuse that he is just a journalist doing his job, some people are calling him out over that claim. One such person is Oleksiy Goncharenko, who's a member of the Verkhovna Rada (which is Ukraine's equivalent of a parliament). He made this post on Twitter/X saying, “If Tucker Carlson really wants to hear Ukrainian voice - it's so easy! As Ukrainian parliamentarian I'm ready to speak with Mr. Carlson. So if you are really journalist and not propagandist - after interview with Putin you should speak with Ukrainian. I'm ready. Mr. Carlson?”

As of this writing Tucker Carlson has not accepted Oleksiy Goncharenko's offer to be interviewed. If he actually interviews Goncharenko or any other Ukrainian government official, I'll definitely write a sequel to this post.

That Putin interview is yet another reason why Tucker Carlson has now ruined his reputation by being an open Kremlin shill. Many Americans will loathe him for giving a very friendly platform to a murderous dictator like Vladimir Putin, who had ordered the invasion of a country that was never a real threat to Russia, had infiltrated one of the two major American political parties, and had interfered in US elections (and the Kremlin is doing it again this year in an effort to get Trump reelected). Which brings to mind this meme that I've seen circulating around social media on how Carlson would've probably done a similarly adoring interview with Adolf Hitler had Carlson been alive during World War II.

Why is Tucker Carlson doing this? Why is he spending so much of his time spreading Kremlin propaganda? It can't be because he needs the money. Thanks to his stepmother's legal adoption of him, he is an heir to the Swanson's frozen food family fortune. He can't be doing it for the prestige since many Americans and others who are siding with Ukraine in this war have openly expressed their disgust with Carlson on social media. Either Tucker Carlson is so totally infatuated with the idea of having the US become an authoritarian nation just like Russia that he's willing to do whatever it takes to make that a reality or maybe the Kremlin has some kind of kompromot on him so he's being blackmailed into helping the Kremlin with its propaganda.

Basically Tucker Carlson, just like Jackson Hinkle, has ruined his own future because most people will not want to do business with a Putin apologist. It will be the same fate that the famous and talented German film director Leni Riefenstahl faced after World War II because she once made a propaganda film that painted Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in a positive glowing light called Triumph of the Will. Just as no film studio anywhere on Earth wanted to do business with Riefenstahl because of her past association with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, no news network anywhere in the world will want to be associated with Tucker Carlson because of his adoring interview with Vladimir Putin and his frequent spreading of pro-Kremlin propaganda.

At least Tucker Carlson won't be poor and destitute because he'll have his share of the Swanson's frozen food family fortune to live off of for the rest of his life.

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