Election 2012 - Republican Presidential Debate

Contributor

Hedge Fund Alden Global Capital To Buy Tribune Publishing

Staff

Getty

For The Washington Post

Lucy Letby Sentenced Following Murder Conviction

Getty Images

Sam Feist

US-POLITICS-JUSTICE-COURT-TRUMP

2024PULITZERS

The Washington Post

The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists' Headlines & Headliners Fundraising Event

Stringer

for The Washington Post

protests-wkcr

Former U.S. President Donald Trump appears at court in New York

Michael Cohen Testifies Before the House Intelligence Committee

Media Rebellious Journalists

Jim Hoft

Laura Coates

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

The world’s coolest hotels want to tell you a story

6 Airbnb red flags to spot before you make a booking mistake

Flying budget airlines might not be as cheap as it seems

The other side of Punta Cana: A crackdown on Haitians

Top White House aide to meet Netanyahu, who is under political pressure

Live updates: Rescuers struggle to find helicopter carrying Iranian president

Kyle Finnegan’s rare hiccup helps Phillies to a 4-3 win in 10 innings

Joey Gallo returns, but Nats endure another quiet offensive night

Walter Johnson’s jersey from 1920 showdown with Babe Ruth sold at auction

How Jim Jordan tried to connect the dots on Biden’s $8 million book deal

Biden’s false claim that inflation was 9 percent when he took office

Did Obamacare ‘massively’ increase the cost of health care?

‘Never Trump?’ ‘Never Biden’ voters might loom larger.

Lawyer preparation suggests Trump won’t testify in New York trial

Blue Origin to fly again as space tourism struggles to get off the ground

Why this company’s biggest fans turned against it

These ISIS news anchors are AI fakes. Their propaganda is real.

The problem with diversity statements — and what to do about them

Russia shows resilience. There is more to do for Ukraine.

Trump promises tax cuts and fewer rules. CEOs shouldn’t fall for it.

Carolyn Hax: Friends say to break other plans to avoid offending new man

Ask Amy: Should my husband get a say in what I do with my inheritance?

Ask Amy: Can’t a single woman eat alone without interruption?

Would you eat this weird sandwich? Barry Enderwick would. 

She finished chemo then got a medical degree: ‘The dream is real now’

Puppy abandoned with heart-rending note is adopted, named Minerva

In photos: The 149th running of the Preakness Stakes

Book Tour: At home with Amor Towles

Gov. Doug Burgum speaks in support of Trump

Trump

Tucker Carlson Network

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow should have been a big win for both of them.

For Putin, it was a chance to explain his justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/02/06/tucker-carlson-will-interview-putin/" target=_blank>a sympathetic voice in American conservatism</a>, just as congressional Republicans are considering whether to approve a Ukrainian aid package. For Carlson, it was an opportunity to bolster his relevance after being <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/04/24/tucker-carlson-leaves-fox-news/" target=_blank>fired from Fox News</a> last year — and promote his new media venture at the same time.

But Carlson’s much-touted <a href="https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1755734526678925682" target=_blank>interview</a>, recorded on Tuesday and released on Thursday evening, ran into a problem as soon as it began. In his attempt to justify the invasion, Putin spent a significant part of the interview focused on a tedious recounting of Russian and Ukrainian history, to the point that Carlson became irritated and the two began to clash.

Carlson addressed the dispute in his introduction to the interview.

“Putin went on for a very long time, probably half an hour, about the history of Russia,” the former prime-time star explained in his preamble from a spot overlooking Moscow’s Red Square as snow fell around him. “... And honestly, we thought this was a filibustering technique and found it annoying and interrupted him several times, and he responded. He was annoyed by the interruption.”

Style is where The Washington Post covers happenings on the front lines of culture and what it all means, including the arts, media, social trends, politics and yes, fashion, all told with personality and deep reporting. For more Style stories, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/" target=_blank>click here</a>.

Putin’s lengthy version of the history between the two countries — which he’s laid out before, and has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/world/europe/putin-ukraine.html" target=_blank>criticized</a> as a revisionist pretext for war by some historians — went back as far as the 9th century, name-checking the likes of “Prince Rurik” and “Prince Yaroslav the Wise” in an attempt to argue that Ukrainians are actually Russian.

But that rambling account seems unlikely to resonate with Carlson’s die-hard conservative audience in the United States.

Carlson later claimed that he understood why Putin needed to discuss so much history, but as he tried to cut in during the interview, the Russian president grew irritated.

“I asked you at the beginning, are we going to have a serious talk or a show?” Putin said at one point, speaking through an interpreter. “You said a serious talk. So bear with me, please.”

Putin, in rambling interview, barely lets Tucker Carlson get a word in

On Fox News, Carlson was a master of combative interviews, carefully controlling their flow with interjections and even undermining his subjects by flashing a blank look on his face or a mischievous smile. But in Moscow, Carlson was a bystander for much of his own interview, interjecting only briefly. He also didn’t ask the Russian president about a number of challenging topics, from Russian atrocities in Ukraine to Putin’s attacks on internal dissent.

The disputes between Carlson and Putin were a surprise in part because they have recently agreed on so much. Carlson has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/24/tucker-carlson-says-ukraine-is-not-democracy-here-are-facts/" target=_blank>called</a> Ukraine an undemocratic “client state” used to provoke Russia into war, words that echoed Putin so closely that an anti-Trump Republican group <a href="https://twitter.com/AccountableGOP/status/1635766242911961092?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1635766242911961092%7Ctwgr%5E9b589d4fc2bbb12153c803dde4d665fdda21b6ed%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffpost.com%2Fentry%2Fgop-group-tucker-carlson-russian-propaganda-rap_n_641137b6e4b0cfde25c1e855" target=_blank>created</a> a viral video in 2023 that paired Carlson’s rhetoric with Putin’s.

Still, Carlson’s disagreements with Putin about the interview itself became clear even before the interview aired. Earlier this week, in a promotional video for the interview, Carlson falsely portrayed himself as the only Western reporter who had “bothered” to interview Putin. That carried with it an insinuation, deliberate or not, that Putin isn’t important enough to interview, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/07/tucker-carlson-putin-russia-ukraine/" target=_blank>sparking pushback from a Putin spokesman</a> who claimed Putin has received “many” interview requests.

Back in the day, Tucker Carlson was no Putin fan

Despite his fleeting clashes with Carlson, Putin still used the interview to portray Russia as a country acting in self-defense, beset by NATO and the CIA. And while most of the discussion focused on the war, Carlson also granted Putin a forum to hold forth on the grand intellectual questions of our time.

In one of the interview’s stranger questions, Carlson asked how a world leader could profess to be a Christian while ordering violence, only to see the Russian president brush the question away by praising Russia’s “moral values.” Carlson also asked Putin when he thought an “AI empire” of self-aware machines would begin.

“I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk,” Putin replied, referring to the billionaire owner of X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, who has welcomed Carlson’s show onto his platform. “He will do as he sees fit.”

In the interview’s most contentious moment, Carlson pressed Putin to release <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/28/evan-gershkovich-detained-journalist-russia/" target=_blank>Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained</a> in Russia for almost a year.

“I just want to ask you directly, without getting into the details of it or your version of what happened, if, as a sign of your decency, you would be willing to release him to us and we’ll bring him back to the United States,” Carlson said.

Putin demurred, suggesting that Gershkovich could only be released as part of a prisoner exchange.

Sharp. Witty. Thoughtful. Sign up for the Style Memo newsletter.

There was a sense even among some of Carlson’s allies that the interview had failed to reach its full promise. On X, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn — who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying about his own contacts with the Russian government — said viewers should understand that Carlson was probably subjected to negotiated terms about the interview.

“I’m certain there will be a lot of Monday morning quarter backing,” <a href="https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1755765794917458103" target=_blank>Flynn wrote</a>.

Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America

Georgetown University, BS in International Politics

Will Sommer is a media reporter for the Style section. He's the author of "Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America," a book covering the QAnon movement.

Will Sommer

the-washington-post

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during an interview with U.S. television host Tucker Carlson, in Moscow

via REUTERS

Arts & Entertainments

Power

The Media

Fashion

Of Interest

Style

washpost

prism://prism.query/site,/style/media&limit=20

The Media - The Washington Post

Coverage of the media industry from The Washington Post. The latest headlines and breaking news on cable news networks and the influence of digital media

Style - The Washington Post

Style is the source for breaking news and trending topics on fashion, culture, and anything of interest. You’ll find in-depth coverage of the media and entertainment including the latest in movies, music and tv.