Tucker Carlson Explains Why He's Interviewing Vladimir Putin

Tucker Carlson confirmed the speculation that he traveled to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin in a video he posted to X/Twitter from Moscow and offered a bit of a preview of what to expect.

"We're in Moscow tonight,” he began. “We're here to interview the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. We'll be doing that soon. There are risks to conducting an interview like this, obviously. So we thought about it carefully over many months. Here's why we're doing it: first because it's our job. We're in journalism. Our duty is to inform people two years into a war that's reshaping the entire world."

"Most Americans are not informed,” Carlson continued. "They have no real idea what's happening in this region — here in Russia or 600 miles away in Ukraine — but they should know. They're paying for much of it in ways they might not fully yet perceive. The war in Ukraine is a human disaster. It's left hundreds of thousands of people dead."

Carlson then insisted that only hearing one side of the story — that which comes from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, isn’t journalism; it’s propaganda — propaganda being used to justify the United States getting more deeply involved in the war and to pay for it, too.

"It is government propaganda, propaganda of the ugliest kind, the kind that kills people. At the same time, our politicians and media outlets have been doing this — promoting a foreign leader like he's a new consumer brand — not a single Western journalist is bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict. Vladimir Putin,” he said.

"Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now," Carlson continued. "They've never heard his voice — that's wrong. Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they're implicated in, and we have the right to tell them about it because we are Americans too. Freedom of speech is our birthright. We were born with the right to say what we believe; that right cannot be taken away no matter who is in the White House. But they're trying anyway."

Carlson then told about how the Biden Administration illegally spied on Carlson’s text messages to thwart his planned interview with Putin. He suspects that they did the same thing again, but this time, he came to Moscow anyway.

"We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin," Carlson emphasized. "We are here because we love the United States. We want to turn it prosperous and free. We paid for this trip ourselves. We took no money from any government or group. Nor are we charging people to see the interview. It is not behind a paywall."

"Elon Musk, to his great credit, has promised not to suppress or block this interview once it's posted on his platform X and we're grateful for that," he added. "Western governments, by contrast, will certainly do their best to censor this video and other less principal platforms because that's what they do."

Carlson concluded by urging everyone to watch the interview when it’s posted to “know as much as you can” and “decide for yourself."