Tucker Carlson Throws Putin Under the Bus

Tucker Carlson bashed Russian President Vladimir Putin's justification for invading Ukraine, claiming that the "denazification" of the country was "one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard."

Speaking with host Lex Fridman in a podcast episode released Tuesday, Carlson discussed his controversial interview with Putin released earlier this month. The former Fox News star has faced mounds of backlash for meeting with the Kremlin leader, which was the first time Putin agreed to sit down for an interview with Western media personnel since the start of the war in Ukraine.

Putin and Carlson's interview touched on a long list of topics, from a long-winded Russian history lesson to Putin's thoughts on the next U.S. presidential election. Carlson also described his first impression of Putin as someone who "seemed nervous," telling Fridman that the Russian president "went into [the interview] like an over-prepared student."

Fridman specifically asked Carlson for his opinion on Putin's justification for continuing the war in Ukraine, which in part is to achieve the "denazification" of the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, has repeatedly dismissed the Kremlin's claims that Kyiv's government is openly "pro-Nazi."

"I thought it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard," Carlson told Fridman. "I didn't understand what it meant."

"I hate that whole conversation because it's not real," he continued. "It's just ad hominem. It's a way of associating someone with an evil regime that doesn't exist anymore."

Nazism, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, describes the body of doctrines held by the Nazi Party movement led by Adolf Hitler in Germany. According to Carlson, Nazism does not exist anymore because it "is inseparable from the German nation."

"I'm very anti-Nazi," he told Fridman. "I'm merely saying there isn't a Nazi movement in 2024. It's a way of calling people evil."

Newsweek reached out to the Kremlin's press office via email for comment.

Putin has also complained about his conversation with Carlson, telling Russian journalist Pavel Aleksandrovich Zarubin that he had prepared for the former television host to "behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions."

"I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way," Putin said.

The Russian leader also explicitly mocked Carlson during the interview, pointing fun at the fact that his attempts to get a job with the CIA were repeatedly unsuccessful.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov previously told reporters that Putin gave an interview to Carlson because "he has a position which differs" from other Western media."