On the way Carlson. Why did the outrageous journalist need an interview with Putin - and how was he disgraced

The plan of Tucker Carlson, who decided to use Putin in his own interests, was 100% successful. As for the Kremlin, which tried to take advantage of the emerging opportunity, it once again faced a cruel setback. пишет journalist-observer Sergey Ilchenko for "DS".

Tucker Carlson

It is not known exactly who approached whom with the offer to give/take an interview, but the initiative almost certainly came from Carlson. In the first reactions of the Kremlin, some bewilderment at the proposal that fell on him was visible, in which Putin's entourage saw a chance to influence the American elections in favor of Trump. With Carlson, everything is clear: he saw a chance to increase the traffic of his channel - and took advantage of it. In addition, Carlson decided to carefully play into Trump's hand, keeping in mind his own political career, which he aimed for after the presidential elections. His actions are logical and, by and large, devoid of political color. That is, politics is present in them, and in the interview itself, of course, but only to the extent that it is the field on which Carlson conducts his business.

It's true that everything is complicated for Carlson and Trump, and in 2020, believing that the defeated Trump will leave politics, Carlson wrote on WhatsApp "I hate him passionately", and mentioned that Trump's business projects always fail: "What he knows how to destroy things. He is the undisputed champion of the world in this. He is a demonic force, a destroyer. But he is not going to destroy us. I thought about it every day for four years." But then somehow everything got better, and Carlson, along with other Republicans, bowed to Trump and recognized him as a leader.

There is no point in discussing the moral side of the interview: in the end, Carlson has already paid for his decision, he has received the full set of condemning reactions prescribed in such cases. On the other hand, why not? After all, Carlson only asked questions, to which Putin was free to answer as he pleased, showing himself to the Western audience, for whom everything was planned. And Putin opened up, dejectedly repeating all the old tricks, entangled in lies and did not say anything new. The Russian mass media, which covered Carlson's visit in an extremely reptilian manner, also opened up. Both they and Putin wanted to please Carlson and his American audience at any cost - even if it was a humiliated price, and it was all too noticeable. So whose hand did Carlson play into — that's another question.

The release time of the "live" interview was also calculated for the American audience. But here, too, there is a complexity: have many viewers in the USA watched or will watch to the end a two-hour interview devoted to issues that are extremely far from their problems? One hundred million views does not mean one hundred million viewers. Especially those who understood something and remembered something. Moreover, those who somehow changed their position under the influence of what they heard, in any direction. In order for such an interview to work in the USA, it is necessary to carefully disassemble it into quotes, providing each with an understandable commentary. Who will sort it out, and will it be? And how will he be prepared - will there be many who will impersonate him, doing it at least partly for Putin's benefit? Yes, and why, what is the meaning of this? Such a preparer needs to calculate very carefully what he will gain and what he will lose, and whether his losses will exceed what he has acquired. Whitewashing a dictator is always a very dirty business.

So whether Trump uses the opportunity given to him by Carlson is questionable. It's more likely no than yes, and even if partly yes, it's more like an excuse to demonstrate Putin's weakness. And, it means that he has the ability to take a seat in the White House and end the war in Ukraine "within a day." But whether Trump's victory, if it happens, will be a reason for Putin's joy — again, a big question. And the answer, which looms on the horizon, fits into the famous phrase of Buba Kastorsky: "so yes, so no."

And what did the viewers, who are not particularly knowledgeable about Ukrainian-Russian problems, see after watching a fragment of the interview without any comments? They saw an insecure, obviously not very healthy and very stealthy old man, with small, slyly running eyes on a puffy face. Completely unsympathetic, and decidedly unlike a person telling them the truth.

In other words, already at the initial stage, at the stage of the first impression, Putin and his team lost hopelessly.

If Donald Trump decides to use Tucker Carlson's interview to demonstrate Putin's weakness, playing on his negative image of a self-confident liar: "look how weak he is, and Biden has been messing with him for two years," will this greatly increase his support in the United States for the which one does he already have? Most likely, no, at least because the Russian-Ukrainian case is far from the main one for the Americans. Can Trump use Carlson's interview in some other way without offending himself? In the form in which it took place and came out - definitely not. Will this interview improve Putin's position in hypothetical negotiations with Trump? Definitely not. Putin himself sold himself to the American audience as a weak and insecure politician, regardless of the detailed analysis of everything he said, which the mass media will necessarily conduct (including full fact-checking) for American readers.

The prospects of such preparation look so bad for Putin that even Elon Musk trolled him a little, decided to distance himself a little from the Moscow loser.

If he talks about the main thing, as they like to say now, the message that sounded in the Great Fateful Interview - that is how he was treated in the Kremlin, then it was completely obvious, even though it was not spoken. "Dear Donald Trump," announced Putin and the entire Kremlin choir. "Protect us from the Ukrainians, otherwise they will stop us. Take us to you, under your roof, we will try very, very hard."

Putin's confident tone was decidedly not given, and his evasiveness clearly contradicted the pathetic meaning of his phrases. With body language, everything turned out just fine. The overall result looked indecently unnatural and fake. A classic question-answer, like a password-response: "Vladimir Vladimirovich, are you a spy? Do you see, Tucker…” would be out of place here. And the two hours of waiting in the cold, to which Carlson was subjected, before being admitted to the body of the Great Leader, also looked like weakness - an overwhelming longing for the bygone times, when Putin could allow himself to do such things with the heads of state and the Pope. Today, everything has changed, and the dictator is looking for at least some kind of allies, finding them among the same outcasts, or in hopelessly backward countries, and he himself is waiting for them - and they are very late. And Putin couldn't resist, nostalgically playing on Carlson. And Carlson, who now needs to distance himself from Putin - they say, this is who he is to you, take the video and draw your own conclusions, and my party is my business - did not fail to mention this. At the same time, he regretted that he expected specific answers from the interlocutor, but received historical lectures (pseudo-historical, we note - invented by the Austrian General Staff and created by Lenin, although, it seems, by Stalin, Ukraine). Moreover, Carlson said this back in Moscow, against the backdrop of the Kremlin. Probably, the ratings on the American territory will turn out to be less pleasant for Putin. And not because Carlson suddenly saw, but because the grandfather got dressed, moreover, in public and on camera, and it makes no sense to wipe Carlson's ass. It is much more convenient for him to show the whole process in close-up.

In a word, Putin did not show any "master class of communication", which the reptilian Russian mass media are shouting about now, trying to flatter the dictator. The audience saw the humiliated plea: "I'm good, I'm very good, I'm not guilty of anything, I'm better than this son of a dog, Uncle Zelensky, take me back, to the West, to your bosom, and drive him out. Do not offend me, I do not bite. I would only kill all Ukrainians, but for the West, I am harmless." This competition with Zelensky for the location of the West, along with the topic of Ukraine, became the core of the entire interview.

There was a lot of outright lying in the interview, often very clumsy, as well as obvious negligence and punctures by the team preparing Putin. This once again confirms that the offer came from Carlson, and the Kremlin was preparing for the interview very hastily. Otherwise, neither Zelenskyi’s father, who fought in the Second World War (namely father, not grandfather!), who was actually born in 1947, would have appeared there, nor the growing Chinese economy, which has long been the first in the world and continues to grow, nor the first the head of independent Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich, in the image of a Ukrainian nationalist and an associate of Bandera himself, there are many historical inconsistencies. There were also simply stunning things, such as the statement that Poland itself forced Hitler to attack it - they say, "played along" and became "too uncommunicative", just like Ukraine on 24.02.22/2/XNUMX. Hitler, just like Putin, offered Poland to conclude a peace treaty on the condition of not joining NATO and handing over the Danzig Corridor to Crimea - and Warsaw would not listen to him, so they persisted. In general, they themselves are to blame, and WWXNUMX started because of the Poles.

With a detailed analysis of the interview, all of this will definitely be brought out — and, moreover, they will be brought out with all their might. But, I repeat, few of the representatives of the target audience, American, first of all, and European, secondly, will be interested in a detailed analysis at all. Only experts will go into detail, who will then convey their verdict to the ordinary reader: the Moscow dictator has finally resigned, openly cosplays Hitler, and, in addition, is showing more and more obvious signs of senile dementia in public.

And, finally: will at least some part of the Western audience be able to take Putin's interview uncritically, at face value — and, if possible, in its entirety?

Yes, he can. This is how Putin's interview will be perceived by the part of it that, even before him, was uncompromisingly negative in relation to the current authorities of their countries. But there will be few such viewers who have finally taken the position of negating all actions and opinions emanating from the authorities of their country. Moreover, the interview with Putin will have almost no effect on their position either - perhaps it will strengthen it somewhat, but not more.

Perhaps, Putin's only truly interesting statement for the Western audience was his answer to a question about the American journalist Evan Hershkovich, who has been in a Russian pre-trial detention center for almost an hour on charges of espionage. Putin stated that Hershkovich did not work for The Wall Street Journal, but "in the interests of the American intelligence services" and was taken "red-handed" when he "received secret information on a conspiratorial basis." It would be difficult to find a better way to irritate the Western media. And when asked if it was possible to solve the problem, Putin said that yes, it was possible, "through the channels of the special services", exchanged Hershkovich for "a person who is serving a term in one of the allied countries of the United States", for the fact that "out of patriotic feelings, he eliminated the bandit in one of the European capitals".

Apparently, this was an offer to exchange Vadym Krasykov, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, who in August 2019 killed the former Chechen field commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvyla in broad daylight in the center of Berlin. Moreover, not out of patriotic feelings, but on the direct instructions of the Russian special services, which was proven in a German court.

But such proposals are made behind the scenes, not in a public interview. Making them public indicates that the negotiations have reached an impasse, and the Germans have no intention of releasing Krasikov. In other words, here, too, the Kremlin is waiting for failure.

Summarizing what has been said, we can say that Tucker Carlson completed his Moscow mission quite successfully, he solved all the tasks. Putin, together with his staff, completely failed the information operation planned on Carlson's shoulders. He appeared before the whole world pitiful, powerless and ready for any humiliation in order to regain the favor of the West. From this, it is only a step towards increasingly significant concessions. Of course, before the elections in Russia and the USA, Putin will resist, but after them, he will certainly become much more compliant. In a word, it's business as usual: the USA, even in the face of Carlson, has succeeded, but in Great Russia, everything has habitually failed. And now they are trying to pass failure off as success, at least for their own, unpretentious audience.

Read also on Newsky "Baltic all-bank. Can the Kremlin start a war on two fronts? and look at Boring Pence YouTube channel.

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