An accidentally revealing interview

Did Tucker Carlson's heavily hyped chat with Putin end up backfiring on both?

When I heard that Fox News’ ($787.5 million) man Tucker Carlson went to Moscow to interview a certain Vladmir Vladimirovich Putin, I didn’t join in the chorus of condemnation for several reasons:

First, if you’re mad about a brutal dictator being given a platform by the American media, well, that Tu-95 left the airstrip a long time ago.¹

Second, anything that gets Tucker Carlson off North American soil can’t be all bad.

Third, and most importantly: as much as we love it when an interviewer acts like Matlock and makes his subject crack and tearfully confess his sins under vicious cross-examination, I’ve long believed you’re much more likely to get something truly revealing when the interviewer is friendly with his subject.

Many of Donald Trump’s most damning comments have come about when he was speaking to his ideological allies, not when he was facing off against professional journalists against whom he’s repeatedly shown his ability to filibuster.

And so it was with Trump’s boss, openly conceding that a major pro-Russia talking point - that Russia just had to invade Ukraine because it feared Ukraine becoming part of NATO - was complete and utter nonsense. (Michael Tracey hardest hit.)

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I haven’t watched the whole thing, because life is too short, but from all indications the interview went as we all kind of expected: the bowtie guy would bend over and let Putin have his way with him. And, yes, I picked that crude analogy on purpose.²

If anything, it wasn’t a conversation so much as a lecture, with Putin rambling on about his funhouse-mirror version of Eurasian history.

Indeed, the meme template has already been set.