Russia's First Channel featured a 10-minute block on Sunday focusing on the potential impeachment of U.S. President Joe Biden. The segment, which was representative of the type of coverage Kremlin-controlled channels deploy when informing their domestic audience about international events, was largely supportive of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's inquiry into the Biden family's past business dealings.
After laying out a basic description of "treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors," the Russian television presenter anchoring the broadcast posed the question: "To what lengths are the Democrats willing to go to avoid giving up power?"
The ensuing report, narrated by the channel's U.S. correspondent, Georgy Olisashvili, featured several accusations of corruption leveled at the president by Republican Congressional representatives. It then shifted to the possibility that the Biden administration, in order to maintain its position, might resort to "untraditional measures, like in the film Wag the Dog."
After 40 seconds spent laying out the basic plot of the 1997 political satire, in which the spin doctor of a scandal-plagued American Commander-in-Chief hires a Hollywood producer to stage a fictitious diversionary war in Albania, the Russian Channel One news broadcast appealed to the authority of "one of the most popular journalists in America, Tucker Carlson."
The 30-second-long Carlson clip presented to Russian viewers was excerpted from a one-hour interview that the former Fox News host gave to comedian Adam Corolla on August 20, 2023.
"If the Democrats understand that their plan isn't working, what will they do?" Carlson was heard to ask rhetorically. "They could start a war with Russia. That's just what they're planning to do. Next year there could be a real war between the U.S. and Russia."
Carlson went on to be quoted as saying that "I don't think we'll win, but that's a separate analysis. From a political standpoint, the Democrats could announce martial law in order to take over control of the country."
Newsweek reached out via email to the Russian Presidential Administration for comment.
Notably, the English language interview Carlson gave to Corolla over two weeks ago contained even stronger accusations. Before giving his comments about the potential for war with Russia, Carlson laid out his analysis that the Biden administration "will do anything to win."
After reasoning that "they're not gonna do Covid again," he claimed directly: "they're gonna go to war with Russia is what they're gonna do. There will be a hot war between the United States and Russia within the next year."
"I think we could Tonkin Gulf our way into it," Carlson said in the full-length English language version, making reference to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized then-president Lyndon Johnson to increase U.S. military involvement in Vietnam following an alleged Viet Cong attack on the destroyer USS Maddox.
Speaking about those who support Ukraine's defensive war effort against Russian aggression, a group which includes majorities of the Republican caucus in both the House and the Senate, Carlson said: "This is insane. They're insane. These are people who think men can become women, who believe face masks save you from Covid."
"These are not rational people," he continued. "Would they go to war with Russia? Of course they would."
Carlson's full commentary appeared to be too much even for Kremlin-controlled Russian state media. Following Carlson's stated fears about a "real war," the First Channel news segment shifted to a demonstration of the ways artificial intelligence might be used in order to create provocative fake videos in the run-up to November 2024. It then moved on to the publication of a recent NASA report on the topic of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs).
The Russian narrator, Olisashvili, concluded the segment by saying that since the Democratic Party "does not have on its bench a younger, more appealing" candidate than Biden, Russian viewers at home should expect next year's U..S. election season to be marked either by "a flare-up in Covid" or "contact with aliens."
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
