The Biden administration and the US corporate media alike have whipped themselves up into an irrational frenzy over the interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave to conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed. Earlier, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that professional jealousy had driven the hostile reaction from some of the reporter’s colleagues in the press.
The Former Fox News host became the first American media professional to interview the Russian head of state one-on-one since the Ukraine conflict flared up almost two years ago. The two-hour-long interview, which mostly centered on relations between Moscow and Kiev, garnered more than 46 million views on Carlson’s X account (formerly Twitter) and just under a million views on YouTube in the first hours since its release on Friday.
In a previous post on X earlier this week, Carlson accused Western media outlets of lying to “their readers and viewers” by promoting Kiev’s stance while ignoring Russia’s.
“That’s wrong. Americans have the right to know all they can about a war they are implicated in,” he said.
Speaking to Russia’s Izvestia newspaper on Friday, Zakharova said: “This is phenomenal. Their reaction reveals the mendacity of their approaches so much that, frankly speaking, you can’t believe it.”
According to the spokeswoman, “they’ve had a hysterical fit – the White House, the Department of State, all the mainstream media are shouting at the top of their lungs one thing only: don’t watch [President Putin’s interview], and that an American journalist shouldn’t conduct the interview.”
She added that such behavior takes the wind out of Washington’s sails in its attempts to present itself as a beacon of morality, human rights, democracy and freedom of speech.
During a press briefing on Friday, Kremlin spokesperson Peskov noted that the “high interest [in President Putin’s interview] is unquestionable.” He went on to predict that after the dust has settled, “there will be a deep analysis of this interview” in the West.
Speaking during a press briefing on Thursday ahead of the interview’s release, Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council John Kirby urged his compatriots not to “take at face value anything [President Putin] has to say.”
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the conservative reporter as a “useful idiot.” Other public figures have gone so far as to even call on the US government to bar Carlson from returning to the country.
