Tucker isn’t Nancy

Tucker Carlson spent two and a half hours lobbing puffballs at Putin, predictably letting Vlad run off at the mouth, uttering one deranged lie after another.

The former Fox hack clearly didn’t go to the Nancy Astor school of interviewing evil despots.

When Lady Astor met Stalin in 1931, she asked him point-blank: “When will you stop killing people?” “When it’s no longer necessary,” replied Stalin, which was his tactful way of saying ‘never’. Though Lady Astor later went on to blot her copybook, that one question earns her my retroactive gratitude.

Today’s journalists have refined the art of subjecting politicians to third-degree interrogations, but they practise that art selectively. The Kennedy years come to mind, when he was the journalists’ darling and Nixon their bogeyman.

Comparing the questions put to the two politicians at press conferences, one could be forgiven for wondering if freedom of the press had a downside. Watching Carlson’s sycophantic interview of Putin, one could be forgiven for wondering just how free our press is.

Regardless of how much Carlson admires Putin, he should have remembered he was questioning an indicted war criminal. Basic professional integrity demanded that he ask Putin to respond to that indictment.

Launching an unprovoked aggression of a sovereign country, Mr Putin? Torturing and murdering civilians at Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and elsewhere? Mass rapes and looting? Kidnapping Ukrainian children and shipping them to Russian re-education camps? Indiscriminate bombing of residential areas? Threatening the West with nuclear annihilation?

And what about Russia’s internal situation? Meting out long prison terms for even the gentlest dissent? Murdering dissidents at home and abroad? Suppressing free press? Turning elections into a sham? Conducting a propaganda offensive so vile, mendacious, thunderous and incessant that even post-Stalin Soviets look moderate by comparison?

Any honest journalist, in fact any journalist, would have asked such questions. He wouldn’t have started an argument – that’s not what interviews are for. He wouldn’t have accused Putin of lying. But he definitely would have asked tough questions.

Yet Carlson is no objective journalist, certainly not when he covers this subject. He makes no secret of admiring Putin and taking Russia’s side in this conflict. That’s why he started out by letting Putin waffle on for about an hour about Russia’s God-given history.

Anyone with a modicum of education would have known he was listening to the rant of a man suffering from paranoid delusions. Russia, said Putin, had suffered foreign invasions from the time Scandinavian marauders arrived in the 9^th century and the Mongols in the 13^th.

Does Carlson know that Russia didn’t even exist in the 13^th century, never mind the 9^th? That it was merely so many separate and typically hostile principalities? That it was only in the 15^th century that the word ‘Russia’ was first used? Carlson probably doesn’t know any of this. But he wouldn’t have interrupted his idol’s monologue even if he did.

Yet even Carlson probably knew enough history to take issue with Putin’s assertion that the Second World War was started by Poland provoking Germany and leaving Hitler no option but to attack. Putin was clearly implying a parallel between Poland and today’s Ukraine. But then what does it make him?

A point of logic, Mr President, please. Let’s assume all you are saying is correct. Russia has been on the receiving end of foreign invasions since the time she didn’t even exist. But how is this relevant to the problem in hand? Are you suggesting it was the Ukraine that attacked Russia, not the other way around?

Rather than asking this question, Carlson asked what Mark Twain used to call its third cousin twice removed. Did Putin think America was going to invade Russia? Putin responded by describing that question as childish and for once he was right.

Then came leading, and clearly pre-arranged, questions that allowed Putin to repeat his stock lie about having been provoked into action by NATO’s eastward expansion. I would have asked two questions at that point (which explains why I’ll never be in a position to do so).

If Putin correctly regarded the question about a possible NATO invasion of Russia as silly, then how did that expansion threaten Russia in any way? And why did he think not only former Soviet colonies but even Finland and Sweden wished to join NATO? Could it be because they justifiably feared a Russian invasion?

In fact, Carlson screwed up his courage and did ask if Russia had any plans to attack Poland. Only if Poland attacked us, replied Putin. Russia had no interest in Poland, Latvia or anything else, other than the Ukraine. We would never invade, he promised.

Considering that Putin had dispelled provocative rumours of an impending Russian invasion of the Ukraine a few days before it occurred, the promise was somewhat lacking in credibility. But Carlson didn’t bat an eyelid.

What about a negotiated end to the war? he asked. Are you up for it? But of course, replied Putin. He had always been ready to negotiate. But that ghastly Zelensky had banned any talks with Russia, ever.

In fact, the war could have ended a year and a half ago, added Putin, when Russia had prepared a thick volume of premises for peace talks. The Ukraine was amenable, but then another ghastly politician, Boris Johnson, then Britain’s PM, expressly forbade her to sit down with the Russians.

Mr Johnson ought to take that as a compliment. I doubt he was aware of the dictatorial powers he had over foreign leaders.

Still, Johnson is no longer in politics, Putin pointed out gleefully. That’s the problem with Western politicians: here today, gone tomorrow. Hard to do business that way – dictatorships, such as Putin’s own, implicitly work much better.

Still, he had good working relationships with some US presidents, notably Clinton, George W. Bush and Trump. No wonder.

Clinton supposedly mooted the possibility of Russia joining NATO. Bush met Putin and: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. I was able to get a sense of his soul.” And the less said about Trump’s pronouncements on Putin, the better.

Speaking of America, continued Putin, expertly guided by Carlson’s loving hand. She has her own problems galore: no control of the Mexican border, a $33-trillion debt and so forth. Does she really need arming the Ukraine? Does she, hell.

Stop supplying weapons to the Ukraine, explained Putin, and the war would end within weeks. That’s true, it would. But not the way either the Ukraine or the West would find acceptable.

Lest Carlson’s detractors accused him of bias, he did ask a semblance of a tough question. Was Russia planning to release the WSJ reporter Elan Gershkovich, arrested on a trumped-up espionage charge? (Carlson continued to pronounce his name as ‘Hershkowitz’, subtly denying that Elan’s parents had a right to spell their name as they pronounced it when they emigrated from the Soviet Union.)   

“We’ve made so many gestures of good will,” replied Putin, “that we are fresh out of them”. He didn’t specify, and Carlson didn’t ask, which gestures he had in mind.

Carlson was angling for the great PR coup of taking ‘Hershkowitz’ back home with him, thereby becoming a national hero. Yet Putin wouldn’t come out and play.

He did, however, hint he might agree to swap Gershkovich for Vadim Krasikov, the FSB hitman serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of a Chechen militant (‘bandit’ in Putin’s parlance) in Berlin. Carlson’s broad smile concealed his disappointment well.

Mine, however, is unconcealable. What was the point of the whole exercise, other than giving Putin yet another loudspeaker for broadcasting his venomous lies? Boosting Carlson’s professional reputation? That didn’t work, as far as I’m concerned. Nancy Astor he ain’t.