The conversation with the Russian president will be shown at 6 pm EST on Thursday
Tucker Carlson speaks at an event in Las Vegas, Nevada on November 20, 2023 in Las Vegas, Nevada. © Ian Maule /Getty Images / AFP
American conservative journalist and political commentator Tucker Carlson has said that his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be aired at 6 pm EST on Thursday. The announcement of the broadcast appeared on Carlson’s Instagram account.
Carlson, who launched his own network on X (formerly Twitter) in June 2023, has traveled to Moscow for a sit-down with Putin. The Kremlin confirmed the meeting on Tuesday.
The Russian president rarely grants one-on-one interviews to foreign press. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that he has “no desire” to speak to Western media that have “completely one-sided” opinions and “aren’t even trying to be impartial.”
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Carlson has said that he wanted to talk to the Russian leader because many Western news outlets “lie to their readers and viewers” and are biased in their coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “That’s wrong. Americans have the right to know all they can about a war they are implicated in,” he said in a video on X on Tuesday.
Carlson has been criticized by some politicians and media figures at home and abroad, who argued that his decision to speak to Putin would amplify Russian “propaganda.”
“He parrots Vladimir Putin’s pack of lies about Ukraine,” former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told MSNBC.
Newsweek quoted one former and two current members of the European Parliament as saying that Carlson could be banned from visiting the EU for providing “a platform” for Putin.