CNN’s Chris Wallace slammed his former Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson for the “softball interview” he conducted with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he shared on X, formerly Twitter, last week.
“Tucker Carlson showed up in Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin. It turned out to be anything but an interview,” Wallace began on Saturday. “Putin droned on for two hours and seven minutes while Tucker sat there like an eager puppy. Occasionally, but rarely, he got in a question.”
“But more telling than what Tucker asked is what he didn’t ask,” he continued. “Nothing about why Putin invaded a sovereign country, nothing about targeting civilians, nothing about Russian war crimes.”
“A reporter can ask Putin a tough question if he wants a real interview,” Wallace argued, before airing a clip from his own 2018 interview with Putin when he asked the president, “Why is it that so many of the people that oppose Vladimir Putin end up dead or close to it?”
Wallace explained how during the Cold War, “Gullible Westerners who spread Soviet propaganda were dismissed as ‘useful idiots.’”
“But calling Tucker that is unfair to useful idiots,” he added. “Now he’s made a cynical decision to chase MAGA’s affection for dictators, and what better way to cash in than Putin’s Kremlin.”
