WND Loved Tucker Carlson’s Softball Interview Of Putin

WorldNetDaily has long been a booster of Vladimir Putin and his authoritarian, LGBT-hating vision for Russia, and that didn’t change when he invaded Ukraine — in fact, its affinity for the dictator has arguably grown. A Dec. 28 article reprinted from the discredited, far-right Gateway Pundit, written by Jim Hoft, cheered that Putin is putting right-wing narratives into school textbooks:

A new Russian history book for 11th grade students claims former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election “as a result of obvious electoral fraud by the Democratic Party.”

Even the Kremlin knows the 2020 elections were stolen!

[…]

Apparently, the Kremlin is more honest than our own Pravda media.

No, it’s not, but we assume Putin made it worthwhile to Hoft to write up this propaganda.

When Tucker Carlson (of whom WND is also a fan) flew to Moscow to do a softball interview with Putin, WND was completely on board. It published the transcript of a Feb. 6 video in which Carlson tried to defend the interview and whined that Western journalists had little interest in interviewing an aggressive warmongerer — and it certainly didn’t note how dumb and self-aggrandizing his defense was. Bob Unruh further defended the interview from critics in a Feb. 7 article, with a little help from Elon Musk:

Such is the state of censorship around the globe today that elites who are in power in multiple ways were so enraged by the fact Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin that they attacked Carlson, suggesting censorship, travel bans, and more.

It seems that the old journalism trope about interviewing those whose decisions and actions are affecting – even killing – people so the world knows them a little better, is gone.

But even as officials in various countries were suggesting travel bans, and more, against Carlson, X’s Elon Musk was throwing their ideology back in their face.

“Arrest those calling for his arrest!” he charged on his social media platform.

Not only did WND provide its own link to the interview itself, Bob Unruh wrote his own Putin propaganda piece on it in a Feb. 8 article:

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with first-strike journalist Tucker Carlson, says his sources have revealed to him that Joe Biden is “not running the country.”

Biden’s policies since he’s been in office have portrayed America as a weak, vacillating nation blown back and forth by the winds of social ideologies that’s he’s emphasized.

Those ideologies include transgenderism and abortion, which Biden is insisting on imposing around the globe; global warming, on which he is demanding to spend trillions of dollars; and undermining the nation’s elections by trying to ban President Donald Trump from the 2024 election.

Biden’s age, 81, and his multiple mental blunders and verbal gaffes have just added evidence to that conclusion.

Putin had comments on all of those topics.

[…]

To Americans, Putin would say, “Our message is Russia is not your enemy. We don’t want war. We’re ready for peace. Your leaders seek conflict. This is not what we want. Russia stands for its own people. We do not want what is not ours.”

Unruh failed to mention the fact that, by invading Ukraine, Russia indisputably wanted this war; instead, he continued to play stenographer by uncritically forwarding more claims: “Did we invade or were we invaded? Look at the history. Look at the people living there. Historically it’s we who were invaded and are simply fighting back now. The lands and people are Russian and we will have again what was always ours.” Unruh also ignored that Carlson failed to offer any pushback on Putin repeating Nazi narratives and spouting revisionist history by blaming Poland for Germany invading it; Carlson merely gushed that Putin was offering “a sincere expression of what he thinks.”

WND largely ignored widespread criticism of the Carlson’s softballs to Putin, only republishing a Daily Caller article quoting Hillary Clinton calling Carlson a “useful idiot” and publishing a Feb. 12 column by Daniel McCarthy stating that Putin’s revisionist history shows that he’s “fighting a war he can’t win against forces he doesn’t understand” (though he offered no criticism of Carlson).