Tucker Carlson left Moscow greater than per week in the past, driving excessive from an interview with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that returned him to the highlight after his abrupt cancellation by Fox Information final spring.
However the interview with the wartime autocrat, mocked in numerous corners of the political-media world for its delicate contact, continues to have an extended and tortured afterlife — changing into a trending subject yet again on Friday after Mr. Putin’s most vocal home opponent, Aleksei A. Navalny, turned up lifeless in a Russian jail.
“That is what Putin’s Russia is, @TuckerCarlson,” Liz Cheney, the previous Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, wrote on X after the information of Mr. Navalny’s loss of life broke on Friday. “And you’re Putin’s helpful fool.”
Naomi Biden, President Biden’s granddaughter, additionally weighed in, pointing to a video that Mr. Carlson had not too long ago posted through which he contrasted the supposed splendors of Russia beneath Mr. Putin’s management with the “filth and crime” of the USA. “Has something aged so poorly, so shortly earlier than?” Ms. Biden wrote on X.
In a press release to The New York Occasions on Friday, Mr. Carlson stated: “It’s horrifying what occurred to Navalny. The entire thing is barbaric and terrible. No respectable particular person would defend it.”
The remark represented a notable change in tone from earlier this week, when he appeared to supply a blasé opinion concerning Russia’s therapy of Mr. Navalny, who was first imprisoned three years in the past on expenses of corruption and “extremism” that the USA known as baseless.
Requested at a convention in Dubai on Monday why he had not questioned Mr. Putin about Russia’s free speech crackdown, Mr. Navalny’s jailing or suspected political assassinations, Mr. Carlson stated these have been “the issues that each different American media outlet talks about.” (Mr. Carlson was, in reality, the primary Western media determine to interview Mr. Putin in additional than two years.)
However, Mr. Carlson stated then, “management requires killing individuals — sorry, that’s why I wouldn’t need to be a pacesetter” — feedback that got here beneath nonetheless extra criticism after Mr. Navalny’s loss of life.
Mr. Carlson stated in a press release on Friday that his remarks about management “had zero” to do with Mr. Navalny. “I wasn’t referring to him, which is clear in context. I’m completely against killing.”
Although Mr. Carlson did press Mr. Putin through the interview on Russia’s detention of the Wall Road Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, he sat silent for lengthy stretches as Mr. Putin carried out a historical past lecture that offered a one-sided and typically false narrative about Ukraine.
Mr. Carlson’s followers and supporters on X portrayed criticism of his interview as bitter grapes from mainstream journalists who didn’t get to interview Mr. Putin themselves.
However on Wednesday, a brand new pundit joined the refrain of those that stated Mr. Carlson had gone too simply on Mr. Putin — Mr. Putin himself.
Talking with a state tv host, Mr. Putin stated he was dissatisfied that Mr. Carlson had not requested “so-called sharp questions” as a result of he wished the chance to “reply sharply” in his personal solutions.
“He turned out to be affected person and listened to my prolonged dialogues, particularly these associated to historical past, and didn’t give me cause to do what I used to be prepared for,” Mr. Putin stated. “So, frankly, I didn’t get full satisfaction from this interview.”
Justin Wells, one in all Mr. Carlson’s high producers, responded on Friday that viewers ought to “choose for themselves.”
Mr. Putin’s mockery of Mr. Carlson got here as the previous Fox host was basking within the aftermath of his interview by providing a gradual stream of reward for Russia and Mr. Putin, whose management he has extolled as superior to Mr. Biden’s.
On Wednesday, Mr. Carlson posted a brief video recorded at a Russian grocery retailer, saying its choice and costs supplied an instance of Russia’s superiority over the USA, which he described as rife with “filth and crime and inflation.”
“Coming to a Russian grocery retailer, the center of evil, and seeing what issues price and the way individuals dwell, it is going to radicalize you in opposition to our leaders,” he stated within the video. “That’s how I really feel, anyway — radicalized.”
(Russia has greater than twice the speed of inflation as the USA, and its residents spend a greater proportion of their family budgets on groceries.)
The video drew a bipartisan rebuke: from Naomi Biden and, earlier than her, Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina.
As a polemicist who has lengthy dabbled in pro-Russia narratives and now depends on subscriptions from these drawn to simply such content material, Mr. Carlson operates in a sphere the place the criticism he has obtained this week may very well be a catalyst for nonetheless extra help.
“He’s simply measured by a wholly completely different yardstick,” stated Nicole R. Hemmer, an affiliate professor of historical past at Vanderbilt College who research conservative media. “Tucker beneath assault is nice for Tucker.”
