The Tucker Carlson–Kremlin Bond Just Got Stronger

RT Screenshot

Among the politerati, there’s been much cogitating about what happens to Trumpism and MAGA once Donald Trump is gone. (The assumption is that, yes, one day he will not be here.) What might be next for this cultish movement without its godhead, especially given the cleavages that have emerged over the Iran war, the Epstein files, Israel, and other matters? Can any of Trump’s craven lieutenants win the support and devotion of Trump’s following? JD Vance? Marco Rubio?

Some watchers of the right have speculated that Tucker Carlson might be the natural leader of post-Trump Trumpism. He has broken with Trump over the Iran war, but he remains perhaps the top influencer on the right, leading a rump group of conservatives (which includes former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and soon-to-be-former Rep. Thomas Massie) who once were full MAGA and Trump loyalists but now are...something else. Perhaps we could flatter them by calling this group America First conservatives, though that doesn’t truly capture their nativism and extremism.

So it’s important to pay attention to Carlson’s peregrinations and associations. And he made a major move a few weeks ago, appearing for an hour on RT, the Russian state-controlled media outfit.

RT is more than just Vladimir Putin’s propaganda mill. It runs disinformation operations, one of which was exposed two years ago when the Justice Department indicted two RT employees for funneling at least $10 million to pro-Trump media figures in the United States, including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool. (Johnson, Pool, and the others claimed they didn’t know the extravagant amounts they were paid originated in Moscow.) After that indictment was disclosed, Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT, went on Russian state television and boasted that RT worked “undercover” and engaged in “partisan warfare, guerrilla warfare,” and she claimed it had created in America a network of “bloggers with unbelievable audiences” that had “an electorally significant influence.” (For more on this RT operation, see my forthcoming book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America.)

Carlson showed up on RT earlier this month as a guest on a show hosted by Rick Sanchez, a former CNN anchor who was fired in 2010 after making comments criticized as antisemitic. Subsequently, Sanchez put in a short stint at Fox News, and in 2019 he joined RT America, which shut down after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Three years later, he moved to Moscow and became the anchor of RT International’s flagship show.

At the start of their hourlong chat—with the former Fox personalities noting they were close pals—Sanchez reported that when he recently interviewed right-wing influencer (and nutball conspiracy theorist) Candace Owens during a trip she made to Moscow, she said she would back Carlson if he runs for president in 2028. Carlson responded with his trademark high-pitched chuckle and said, “I’m a podcaster. I’ve never run anything...I’m not planning to run for president, for sure.”

Once that matter was dispensed with, Carlson spent much of the broadcast sharing opinions that must have heartened the Kremlin. He claimed that the United States government is not controlled by elected officials but by a “deep state” that is hell-bent on abolishing Russia. Democracy is an “illusion” in the United States, he insisted, and the “English-speaking West has been destroyed” by enemies purposefully deploying “mass migration” as a weapon. Russia is next, he contended, because they want a war with Russia. Carlson bleated:

Why do they hate Russia so much? Well, I think it’s very much related to the fundamentals of Russia. Maybe being the last big white Christian country on the planet is a very dangerous thing to be. I don’t want to believe these things…But watching carefully for a long time has convinced me that the wacko fringe’s darkest suspicions may have some truth in them. Because what’s the other answer? Why would there be a war with Russia? Nobody wants this. But our leaders want this, and you have to ask why.

As is often the case with demagogues, Carlson didn’t specify who they are. Who is orchestrating this war with Russia because it’s a “white Christian” nation? Who knows?

Carlson repeatedly asserted—with Sanchez enthusiastically agreeing—that the conflict in Ukraine is an American war against Russia, not a brutal invasion mounted by Putin. “They think they have the right to control Russia,” he said, maintaining that they were deliberately provoking Russia in the hope that Putin would respond by attacking NATO with a hypersonic or nuclear weapon, that Russia could then be declared the aggressor, and that a third world war would be launched. That is, they are engineering what could become a nuclear Armageddon.

This must be music to Putin’s ears: Nefarious forces in control of the US government are pursuing a diabolical scheme to break up Russia, and that explains the war in Ukraine.

But who’s behind this plan to start WWIII? Trump? Rubio? Pete Hegseth? Carlson never fingered any actual person. He kept referring to the “deranged leadership class.” He claimed the US government “has been completely hijacked by people using the United States for their own interests.” Again, who? Is it Vance? Carlson denounced both the Democratic and Republican parties as evil—issuing the complaint there’s little difference between the two—and warned there’s been “a total takeover of the United States by people who hate the United States.” Would that be Russell Vought? Or Mike Johnson?

Over and over, Carlson referred to the “American war against Russia,” never once mentioning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or Russia’s attacks on civilian targets, its alleged war crimes, and its kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children. Ukraine is “not a sovereign country fighting for its freedom,” he argued, just a “client state of NATO and the United States” that’s being used to wipe out Russia.

Carlson was fuzzy on the motivation of these deep state cabalists who supposedly initiated this war on Russia and who are trying to spark a worldwide conflagration. At one point, he maintained their goal is to stop the East from rising and that the “only way to reset [the current international status quo] is with a global war.” His convoluted argument, though, is in complete sync with Moscow’s talking points: The United States is responsible for the war in Ukraine, and Kyiv is an illegitimate government and no more than a pawn in an international conflict ignited by Washington. He praised Putin for practicing restraint in response to attacks on Russian soil—which he attributed to the United States and the CIA, not Ukraine. Sanchez piped up that the Russians he golfs with are angry that Putin has not struck back more forcefully.

The interview was a lovefest for Putin and Russia. Sanchez praised Moscow for delivering healthcare, maternity leave, and overtime pay to the citizenry—and for building more churches than are being constructed in the United States. He said that the people of Russia want Putin to stay in power. Carlson called Russia “a beautiful country, an amazing country, my favorite country I’ve ever visited.” There was no talk of Putin’s repressive ways or suppression of democracy.

They both offered critiques of America that overlap with those of the left: The political system is dominated by corporate interests, Carlson opined. Big Tech—including Palantir, Apple, and Google—controls the system. “Power is in the hands of capital,” Carlson declared, sounding like a DSA member. He also exclaimed that American politicians “are controlled by Israel,” which he called a “criminal state” for its assaults in Gaza that have killed thousands of civilians.

But don’t look for Carlson to build a coalition with progressives. He assailed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saying she “doesn’t like whites.” That remark showed his anti-elite populism is propelled by his racialist views. The United States and the West are being de-whitened by an “invasion” of dark-skinned migrants that’s been cooked up by them, and Russia is now targeted for eradication because it’s a white Christian nation. His conspiracism centers on race.

It’s no surprise that Carlson is aping Putin’s line on the war in Ukraine.

In 2022, as Russian troops stormed into Ukraine, he echoed Russian disinformation that falsely claimed the United States operated bioweapons labs in Ukraine. (That was one reason that Moscow gave for its “special military operation.”) At that time, I revealed the Kremlin had instructed state-friendly media outlets to include clips and quotes of Carlson in their articles and broadcasts. “It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” a Kremlin document said. It summed up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.”

It’s one thing to be used by Putin’s propagandists; it’s another to join forces with them. Carlson told Sanchez his policy is to “speak to anyone who will have me,” including Israeli television or North Korean television. Yet by appearing on RT, he’s collaborating with an organization that’s part of Putin’s intelligence and disinformation network that supports this horrific war in Ukraine and that targets the United States. He also demonstrated that the conspiracism of the America First right overlaps with the disinformation pushed by Putin and his operatives.

Carlson did not say much to Sanchez about his purported plan to form a third party. But he hailed Greene, Massie, and Joe Kent, a former Trump administration intelligence official, who each broke with Trump on the Iran war, the Epstein files, or both—and who each have been far-right conspiracy mongers. Is this a sign that Carlson is heading toward a third party or political movement with race-driven conspiracism and deep-state paranoia at its core? He is pushing an anti-plutocrat populism that is fueled by racial resentment and that depicts the American system as a phony democracy, totally corrupt, with a shadowy “leadership class” that’s deceitful and treasonous. In his view, white America—and the entire West—has been betrayed and destroyed by them, whoever they are. And now they are scheming to start WWIII and annihilate Russia. No wonder the Kremlin loves Carlson.

Carlson is a master of the art of self-deprecation. When Sanchez praised him for courageously speaking out, Carlson said, “I’ve had no effect on recent history other than to whine about it.” The danger is that his whining could become a siren call for what follows Trumpism.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

Peter Baker, the New York Times’ chief White House correspondent, recently wrote a sharp piece summing up Donald Trump’s foreign policy, noting, “his attack-thy-friends, befriend-thy-enemies approach to international relations has become the feature, not the bug, of US foreign policy. Traditional alliances from Europe to Asia to the Middle East have frayed while the president courts those once seen as its adversaries.” Baker pointed out that Trump has been quick to dump on and pick fights with America’s strongest partners (see the trade war he just started with Canada) and go easy on and play footsie with adversaries, such as Russia and North Korea.

Baker explained that Trump believes that the United States has been taken advantage of by its allies and that his own force of personality can win over any foe. But he left out one important piece of the equation: Trump likes authoritarians and dictators. He has cozied up to Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Nayib Bukele, Mohammed bin Salman, and others. He has a distaste for democracy and democrats and would rather be able to do whatever he damn pleases. His main concern about the war in Ukraine is not that Putin is killing civilians and committing war crimes to crush a democracy but that the conflict is inhibiting his own ability to form a global partnership with Putin—whom he once described as his potential “new best friend”—and strike deals with Russia.

Trump’s foreign policy cannot be fully explained without acknowledging his personal affinity for tyrants and his psychological need to be a member of that club. Call it autocrat envy.

The Bear. Last week, I grumbled about House of the Dragon, griping that its characters, unlike those of Game of Thrones, were hollow and hard to give a fig about. The Bear is the opposite—one of those rare television series in which every role is as fully designed and developed as one of the exquisite dishes served in The Bear, the high-end and financially struggling restaurant at the center of the show. And there are so many well-drawn characters to care about, be it the tortured Carmen Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), the stronger-than-she-looks Sydney Adamu (Ayo Edebiri), the ever-evolving Richie Jerimovich (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), down to the doofus Fak brothers (Matty Matheson and Ricky Staffieri). This is only a partial list.

There are people who say they find it tough to watch the show because it conveys so much anxiety and tension. The restaurant business is tough—especially when the restaurant is a family-run enterprise and that family is brimming with dysfunction. But there’s also a ton of love and loyalty in the mix. The reason the anxiety resonates so sharply is because we feel for each of these characters. It can be difficult—but rewarding—to watch them wrestle with their individual and collective challenges. It’s a brilliant television ensemble.

In the fifth and final season of the show, which recently hit Hulu, seven of the eight episodes occur on a single day—a day that presumably can make or break the restaurant and determine the fate of this intrepid band of chefs and co-workers. A Michelin food critic, they believe, is coming to the joint this night, and Chicago has been struck by a deluge that has caused flooding in the restaurant and assorted calamities. Meanwhile, The Bear is on the verge of running out of money, and Carmen, its guiding force, has decided to quit the biz and leave the place to Syd and Richie.

The tension is at DEFCON 1. A work family and a genetic family are each in peril. Every second counts and captures the stress, as a cast of superb actors turn this everyday crisis into an epic adventure. And the show’s creators stick the landing. The Bear delivered one of the richest and most satisfying meals that could be found on television in recent years.

World’s Gone Wrong, Lucinda Williams. A few weeks back, I saw the legendary Lucinda Williams open for Bob Dylan. For decades, she has blended Americana, folk, blues, and country into a raw musical style that’s often accompanied by hard-edged lyrics. She performed a tight set, featuring songs off World’s Gone Wrong, an album she released earlier this year. The title is a play on Dylan’s 1993 album World Gone Wrong. And two standout tracks from her disc—“The World’s Gone Wrong” and “Something’s Gotta Give”—are fueled by anger at what has happened to the United States in recent years. In “The World’s Gone Wrong,” she sings about a nurse who’s having trouble getting by and can’t understand why: “She tries hard to ignore the news / Nothing makes sense and she gets confused / Between what is false and what is true.” On “Something’s Gotta Give,” she doesn’t hold back: “There's a danger to these days / You can feel it in the air / Evil has come to play / You can feel it everywhere.” If you’re looking for high-octane outrage, Williams is your gal.