I’m not exactly sure what I thought of the interview,” remarked American journalist Tucker Carlson shortly after his two-hour conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s probably going to take me a year to decide what that was.”
Carlson said that “there’s no question” that Putin is smart. However, he expressed that the Russian President is “not good at explaining himself.”
Nonetheless, Carlson named five big-picture “quick perceptions” following his interview with Putin.
#1 – Putin is “very wounded” by the rejection of the West.
During the interview, Putin shared an account with then-President Bill Clinton about the possibility of Russia joining NATO.
According to Putin, Clinton first answered, “I think so” to the proposition. But after speaking with others, he said, “It’s not possible.”
Carlson asked Putin if he was sincere about joining NATO, and Putin clarified that he genuinely wanted to know if membership was a possibility. He indicated that a positive response from the West could have led to a process of reconciliation and, potentially, eventual membership into NATO.
Carlson concluded in his post-interview statements, “That’s the whole point of NATO, I guess, is to contain Russia. And Putin is wounded by this.”
#2 – “Russia is not an expansionist power.”
Carlson declared, “You have to be an idiot to think that” Russia is an expansionist power.
Why does Carlson think that? Because “Russia is too big already. It’s the biggest landmass in the world. They only have 150 million people.”
He added, “They’ve got more than enough natural resources. They’re swimming in natural resources. They don’t have enough people, in their view. So, the idea that they want to take over Poland, why would you want to do that? They just want secure borders.”
#3 – Putin likely wants peace in Ukraine.
Carlson shared, “He [Putin] was willing to admit that he wants a peace deal in and sort of give it away and just say that out loud. He said it a couple of different times. Again, maybe he’s lying in ways I didn’t perceive, but he kept saying it, and I don’t know why he would say it if he didn’t mean it.”
“As a matter of fact,” Carlson continued, “there is evidence, overwhelming, that there was a peace deal, or part of a peace deal with the beginning of peace talks, a settlement of some sort on the table a year and a half ago that the former prime minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson, scuttled on behalf of the Biden administration and convinced Zelensky and the Ukrainian government not to enter into these talks. I mean, that’s kind of an established fact. The Israelis were there. They revealed this. That happened.”
#4 – Demands for Russia to relinquish Crimea are insane.
“U.S. officials have said on the record and have said to me and are telling a bunch of people that part of the terms have to be Russia giving up Crimea!” Carlson exclaimed.
He added, “Crimea was in Russian hands at the beginning of this war” and warned, “Putin would go to war, nuclear war, if it came down to Crimea … So, if you really think that a condition of peace is that Putin is going to give up Crimea, then you’re like a lunatic!”
#5 – The United States’ track record with regime change is “spotty at best.”
“We are run by nutcases,” Carlson deplored. “The President and that poisonous moron Victoria Nuland. ‘Oh, we’re going to depose Putin.’ Well, then, what happens?” Carlson asked.
He recalled past incidents in recent U.S. history, where depositions of foreign leaders did not go so well:
“What happened in Libya when we deposed and allowed, you know, Qaddafi to be murdered? What happened in Iraq when we brought Saddam to justice? Those countries fell apart, and they have never been rebuilt again.”
Carlson continued. “In Afghanistan, we took out the central government, and they came back. It’s still run by the Taliban. So, our track record of knocking out the leader, which is very easy to do, is spotty at best. Things don’t always get better. And to do that to Russia, the largest landmass in the world with the largest nuclear arsenal, you’re on drugs if you think that’s a good idea.”
Click here to watch Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin.
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