Tucker Carlson Blames White House for His Own Putin Pandering

Tucker Carlson is bizarrely blaming President Biden, Vice President Harris and the White House for the fact that Carlson was a Putin apologist who dismissed the threat of an invasion of Ukraine. Before getting into Carlson’s strange defense of his own ineptness it is useful to remember some of what he said before his fake mea culpa.

In December he was arguing that Biden, not Putin, was the person who wanted war. Business Insider reported: “Carlson then said there is a good chance of a “hot war” with Russia, arguing that Biden would start a war to salvage his historically low approval ratings; Biden, in fact, said Wednesday he would not deploy US troops to Ukraine.” They note Carlson’s embrace of Putin followed a pattern he set already. “ Carlson arrived at his pro-Russia stance not by accident, but by following through to the logical conclusion of his years-long embrace of authoritarian regimes.”

On February 17th, one week before the actual invasion, Carlson was claiming Russia invading Ukraine was Biden’s obsession and that he wouldn’t shut up about it. He asserted, “Russia is Joe Biden’s number one favorite topic of conversation. …You may have asked yourself: When will Joe Biden ever stop talking about Russia?”

Carlson ridiculed Biden’s position: “Vladimir Putin is going to invade our closest ally in the world, Ukraine. So write that down February 16, 2022. Ukraine invasion begins. That’s the day. Joe Biden has been very clear about that.” Putin ended up delaying the invasion by a few days, one week in total and then it came and now he’s intentionally slaughtering civilians by targeting residential areas for missiles and bombs. But when it didn’t happen on the 16th Carlson took that as vindication of his own pro-Putin position.

Carlson laughed at the idea the invasion was merely delayed and again ridiculed Biden. “Now, if Joe Biden noticed the lack of an invasion, he didn’t acknowledge that. He didn’t say a word. Today, he was back on television, assuring us once again, the invasion is coming.”

Remember Carlson’s own words. He said Russia and the Ukraine was “Biden’s obsession” and “he wouldn’t shut up” about it. He said only days before the invasion the President was “assuring us once again, the invasion is coming.” Yet every one of these contradicts the story that Carlson is now telling to justify his positions as Putin’s useful idiot.

On March 3rd Carlson tried to justify his pandering to Putin and then took credit for being “willing to admit” he got it wrong, but it wasn’t his fault he got it wrong. Biden and Kamala Harris are to blame for Carlson’s position on the invasion.

Here is his logic — I use the word loosely here — to justify why Biden is responsible for Carlson being wrong.

He said, “We assumed that if things were dire, serious people would be involved in fixing them. But we looked up and we saw Kamala Harris involved, and that reassured us.”

“We should say, by the way, we didn’t underestimate Vladimir Putin, we overestimated Joe Biden. But we knew that once Kamala Harris was involved, it couldn’t really be that serious.”

What this seems to be saying is that Biden wasn’t doing anything about Russia’s imperialistic moves, only Harris was and if the White House made Harris alone the public spokesman on Russia then it couldn’t have been serious. See, he “overestimated” Biden and expected him to be leading the White House on this issue. But on February 17th he argued Biden wouldn’t shut up about the issue. So which is it? Did he constantly talk about the invasion coming, or did he just fob the issue off on Harris?

Carlson said, “The only thing more embarrassing than being wrong in your estimates is pretending that you weren’t.” But that is exactly what he did, he didn’t admit he was wrong, he deflected the blame for his pandering and said it was Harris and Biden at fault, not him. Unfortunately he’s not intelligent enough to see how hypocritical he is by pulling this stunt. But then again, intelligent commentary on Fox would alienate a large percentage of their viewers and one former president for sure.

Update: Carlson’s fevered imagination is working overtime. He now claims President Biden intentionally provoked Russia to attack. See, it’s America fault that Russia is murdering refugees including children. Ukraine has suspected Russia intended to attack for some time and sought NATO membership hoping that would stop Putin. Vice President Harris didn’t encourage the application or discourage it but gave a very neutral “I appreciate and admire President Zelensky’s desire to join NATO.” Carlson says that is the same as saying “Up yours,” to Putin.

What he doesn’t explain is how Biden caused previous attacks on Ukraine by Putin, which has been carving slices off the country long before Biden was elected. After all they took the whole of Crimea from Ukraine and neither Zelensky nor Biden were on the scene.

Ever the drama queen the weapy Carlson laments, “Why in the world would the United States intentionally seek war with Russia? How could we possibly benefit from that war? We still don’t know the answer to that question.”

Apparently after a brief journey away from his previous position, he’s back to bend over to kiss Putin’s butt once again. What a faithful sock puppet for the Russians.

SUPPORT THIS PAGE AT PATREON

Your support to fund these columns is important, visit our page at Patreon.To make a one time donation sign up before the 1st and after the 3rd of the month cancel it.

Follow our daily comments at Twitter. If you are looking for discounted libertarian books visit our Freeminds website. If you wish to subscribe, free of charge, to this page you can have all new essays emailed to you. Just sign up here.