Adam Kinzinger's Reaction to Tucker Carlson's Russia Trip

Former U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, took to social media on Saturday with his reaction to news of Tucker Carlson taking a trip to Russia.

Carlson was the host of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight from 2016 to 2023, which eventually grew to become the conservative network's biggest primetime news program while also garnering heated criticism for the host's alleged promotion of conspiracy theories and white supremacist rhetoric. Last April, however, Carlson was abruptly fired by the network with no official explanation ever being given.

Speculation highlighted the fact that Carlson was named in the recently litigated Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit, which saw Fox News pay the company $787.5 million after its hosts knowingly promoted Donald Trump's false claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Reports also suggested that texts from Carlson unearthed during the lawsuit, some of which were deemed racist or defamatory to his colleagues, were to blame for his departure.

On Thursday, Russian news outlet Mash reported that Carlson had been spotted recently at various places around Moscow, including a visit to the Bolshoi Theater. While Carlson himself has yet to comment on the visit or confirm the reason for the visit, many have speculated that he might be there to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin for his current series, which he shares directly to X, the platform previously known as Twitter. Carlson has, in the past, frequently shared stances that were complimentary or supportive of Putin and Russia, especially amid its invasion of Ukraine, with some opponents accusing him of echoing Russian government propaganda.

On Saturday, Kinzinger took to X with his own reaction to Carlson's Moscow visit, dubbing the former anchor a "traitor" and sharing a poll asking his followers if Carlson is "on Putins payroll," with the answers being either "yes," "of course," or "no he just LOVES him." As of Sunday morning, "yes" led the poll with 62.4 percent of the vote from over 16,000 respondents.

"He is a traitor," the former congressman wrote in one of his posts.

Newsweek reached out to the Tucker Carlson Network via email for comment on Sunday morning.

Kinzinger previously represented districts in Illinois from 2011 to 2023, emerging later in his tenure as an outspoken GOP critic of Trump and his broader "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) political movement. Alongside Liz Cheney of Wyoming, he was among the only two Republicans to serve on the House select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot and referred Trump and others to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal charges.

On Saturday in response to Carlson's visit to Russia, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, wrote on X: "Democrats and their propagandists in the media are spasming at the prospect of Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin...We have a free press in this country and its people like Tucker Carlson who we depend on to speak the truth!"

Referencing Greene's comments on Sunday, Russia's state-backed news agency, Tass, reported that Kremlin press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said last year that the world would have to "wait and see" whether Putin would speak with Carlson.

Carlson said in late September 2023 that he had attempted to interview the Russian leader, but that the U.S. government had blocked the move. "I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, and the U.S. government stopped me," Carlson told Swiss magazine, Die Weltwoche.