So apparently Tucker is going to Moscow—thereby completing his evolution over the past decade from pro–Iraq War neocon to isolationist Kremlin stooge. The ex–Fox News host has long made clear his preference for the Putinist way of life over the American one. Now, he is apparently traveling across the world to cement his bromance with the Russian dictator.
And let there be no mistake that this will be some sort of balanced interview, in which Carlson just tries to get the Russian perspective on the state of geopolitics. Tucker has expressed overtly on more than one occasion his sympathy for Putin's regime; and he has become a full-time apologist for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Just check his "X" page on any given day—you will find it full of talking points mainlined from Moscow.
Eerily enough, the news about Tucker's plans to interview Putin come the same day that House and Senate Republicans all-but-certainly doomed the much-needed Ukraine aid bill. First, they claimed that they would only support further Ukraine aid if it came with a harsh border crackdown attached. Democrats cravenly obliged, putting together the meanest and ugliest anti-asylum bill penned in recent memory. Then, Republicans decided they would torpedo the package anyway.
The same evening, a number of far-right Republicans also helped vote down a stand-alone aid bill for Israel. Do people really not see what is happening here? Do we have to spell out the connection? On every single foreign policy issue, the MAGA consensus now lines up perfectly with the Kremlin's position.
Another recent give-away came when Tucker started castigating Republican senators for their calls for war with Iran. Now, I happen to agree with Tucker on the policy here. I too think that Lindsey Graham is nuts for wanting to escalate a conflict with Tehran and flagrantly violate the sovereignty of a nation that has so far engaged in no direct hostilities with the U.S. or its neighbors (however culpable the Iranian government may be for the actions of its militant proxies throughout the region).
But why, we have to ask, would Tucker care about this? Trust me, it's not any humanitarian concern about the civilian population of Iran that moves him. Nor can he be scoring any populist points with a right-wing base by seeking to draw closer to Tehran. The only consistent through-line here is the perfect correspondence between all of Tucker's newfound foreign policy views and those of Vladimir Putin.
If MAGA Republicans (who will soon be the only Republicans left) really have become a front for Putin's agenda, it would be all too easy for them to get away with it. After all, many on the left will shy away from hurling the accusation of disloyalty at them too blatantly. Liberals and leftists have a bad hangover from the Cold War. They know how easy it is to get tarred as another "Hanoi Jane," just for criticizing U.S. foreign policy, and they are therefore not likely to accuse their opponents of being shills for foreign interests.
But what happens if the other side is actually disloyal? What happens if they have become so completely disaffected and alienated from American institutions that they actually prefer an authoritarian regime that shares none of our values? That honestly seems to be where Tucker is at this point; and he is taking a lot of the Republican Party with him.
Another, in some ways even bigger problem is that many on the far left basically agree with Tucker's positions. They too feel closer in spirit to America's adversaries than America itself. They would be ready to join with him in amplifying Putin's propaganda.
Many leftists are no doubt defaulting in this regard to their memories of the Cold War. They don't want to participate in something they see as a kind of neo-McCarthyism. But the problem with McCarthy, as we are all too liable to forget these days, is that he accused innocent people. It wasn't that people were entirely off-base to worry about Stalinist influence in high places. In fact, the danger posed by pro-Soviet propaganda in U.S. intellectual circles was a real one.
Plus, this should all be simpler for the left now than it was decades ago, because the Soviet Union doesn't even exist anymore. Putin is not at the helm of some flawed but still recognizably "left-wing" government. The Russian dictator's project is blatantly militarist, nationalist, and revanchist. Why would the left be in any confusion as to whether they ought to support his regime and his invasions?
All of this is not to say that we should withhold all criticism of U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Russia. I could get behind a good-faith effort to try to bring about a negotiated end to the war—even at the expense of a limited sacrifice of some otherwise justified Ukrainian war aims—if it meant stopping the bloodshed more quickly. But such an effort would need to start from a recognition that Putin was the aggressor here, in flagrant violation of international law. It needs to acknowledge that Ukraine is the unjustly injured party.
In other words, it can't just be a program for selling out the Ukrainians because deep down we secretly admire Putin and support his government, no matter how antithetical they may be to American values—which is all Carlson and the rest of his MAGA crew seem to be offering.
And so, I will do what many on the left will not. I will say it. I charge disloyalty. Move over Hanoi Jane, here comes Hanoi Tucker!
And of course, Tucker is in fine company in this regard. There has been a long line of quisling journalists who went over to the other side during previous geopolitical conflicts, and ended up endorsing the adversaries of Western democracy in preference to their own country. Seeing him in Moscow, one is reminded of Pound issuing his broadcasts from Rome, propagandizing for Mussolini from behind enemy lines. Or of "Lord Haw-Haw": a composite figure made up of several English broadcasters with nasally upper-class accents who sang Hitler's praises over the airwaves.
It is not an unfair comparison. After all, the fascist sympathizers during World War II adopted the same label for their foreign policy position as today's far-right MAGA-heads: isolationist. And they even used the same slogan that Trump and Tucker have claimed as their own: "America First."
Why is Tucker doing this—and taking the rest of the Republican Party with him, on this journey toward disloyalty? It seems to be because he has been so alienated by his rejection from various sources of establishment journalism that he has decided to take it out on the country. First, Jon Stewart made fun of him on TV, and Crossfire was canceled. A decade later, Fox News fired him. His brand of extremism proved too rich even for their blood.
And so Tucker, in his efforts to explain these reversals, has concluded that it must be the United States that is rotten, not him. "Not I am a fake, but America’s phoney!" as a character declares in an E.E. Cummings poem. And so he is traveling to Moscow, to flatter a dictator who is actively working to destroy the country that Tucker feels has rejected him.
Thereby, he is surely doing his part as well to install America's own would-be dictator, the no less Putin-worshiping Trump—and thereby bringing one step closer the nightmare scenario of a world-spanning linkage of far-right neo-authoritarian governments actively pledged to eliminating liberal democracy: first falls Ukraine, then us!
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