It’s OK To Interview Putin.

It is perfectly fine to interview Putin. Me, I would go to the depths of Hell to interview the Devil himself if I had the chance, but you have to do it right.

On February 9th TV personality Tucker Carlson aired his exclusive interview with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin made three days earlier. His last interview by an American journalist took place in June 2021 with NBC’s Keir Simmons, but was probably not as widely spread as Carlson’s, probably for two reasons: Carlson’s announced his interview several days before on X and said he would present a never-seen-before Putin. Also because it was amplified by Elon Musk’s X platform where Carlson hosts his show now.

Here is a brief takeaway of what could’ve been one of the major interviews in history.

Just starting the interview, a few minutes in, as Tucker and Putin are just diving into the depths of the interview and Tucker tries to get serious, Putin immediately corrects him and brazenly tells him he doesn’t know anything about history. He shush him and asks him to just sit there and listen.

Besides the rudeness of it all, and the show of authoritarian character, we, as spectators, are sitting in the place of Tucker. Most of us don’t know about Russian history, but would like to ask, would like to know, and Putin just ordered us to sit quiet as he begins his 30 minutes monologue.

And Putin is probably right. At some point, while Putin is taking on Ukraine’s second president Leonid Kuchma, Tucker asks if this happened in 2014!

Sadly Tucker obeys Putin’s orders and for almost 30 minutes he doesn’t push back. He forces us to just sit there and take Putin’s pseudo-historical reasons on why Russia has the right to annex Ukraine. Most of his arguments are the same personal opinions dumped on his 2021 article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”.

On this article Putin shares a personal interpretation of history, where he basically says Ukrainians and Russians are the same people, with the same history.

Although it is true that both were part of the Russian Empire for a long period of time during the mid-17th century, Ukrainians have long searched for autonomy, not so much independence.

Historian Serhii Plokhy shared his thoughts on why exactly Putin is calling for “unity”.

“Because of these connections, if Ukraine could do certain things, it would be much more difficult to say it can’t be done in Russia, that Russia has a special destiny, that democracy would never work in Russia, and so on and so forth. That would be not just a geopolitical setback for Russia, but would undermine the legitimizing myth Russia needs in order to have an authoritarian regime.”

So through our good American Tucker Carlson, Putin had 30 minutes to “teach us” history, to legitimize his authoritarian regime and hopefully change our American minds.

Tucker missed on a unique opportunity to show us Putin and not a bias history lesson on his benefit. At the end the interview confirmed what many Putin biographers had said: after 24 years in power he couldn’t care less to govern a country like Russia. What he cares is to perpetuate a bias historical truth, to correct those who have singled out Russia historical mistakes, including Putin’s own.

Then Tucker tries to get back to it and stop Putin’s boring monologue. And again Putin shush him. At some point he openly humiliates our American friend and makes fun at the fact that Tucker was turned down by the CIA.

This was Tucker last attempt to keep HIS interview in control. He missed the opportunity to ask him about the Wagner incident, about the over 19,000 kidnapped children and a lot of other pushy questions, specially at a moment where republicans in the U.S. are blocking aid towards Kyiv and Trump is looking for a second term.

It is perfectly fine to interview Putin. Me, I would go to the depths of Hell to interview the Devil himself if I had the chance, but you have to do it right.