Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s claim that no western journalist has tried to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin since his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is so absurd that even the Kremlin is weighing in.
While promoting his upcoming interview with Putin, Carlson claims “not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country in this conflict: Vladimir Putin.”
Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman told the New York Times that is a lie.
“Mr. Carlson is not correct, but he couldn’t have known that,” Peskov said. “We receive a lot of requests for interviews with the president.”
Several western journalists, including CNN’s Christiane Amanpour also called Carlson’s claim bullshit.
“Does Tucker really think we journalists haven’t been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full scale invasion of Ukraine? It’s absurd,” Amanpour wrote on X/Twitter.
The Russian government has denied numerous requests from news outlets’ to speak with Putin, but decided to accept an interview with Carlson who has been accused of being a Putin apologist during his time at Fox.
The Times noted that Putin’s interview with Carlson could be a “sign that the Russian leader is seeking to make a direct appeal” to American conservatives and Republicans in Congress as they weigh additional U.S. aid to Ukraine.
