The Big Sucker Known as Tucker

“Let’s be clear about Vladimir Putin,” says conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter. “He’s a murderous scumbag ex-KGB colonel. He’s not a good guy. He’s not a hero. He’s a Russian nationalist and a massive thief.”  But then, this columnist for the website Townhall says that poor Tucker Carlson was “set up” by Putin when the Russian dictator gave him an interview. His claim is that “Vladimir Putin set up Tucker Carlson by murdering Alexis Navalny just days after Tucker's controversial visit to Moscow and interview.”

Tucker wasn’t set up. He played into Putin’s hands, demonstrating to the world how a “top” American journalist can lose perspective and grovel before a mass murderer. Hopefully, this embarrassing performance disqualifies the former Fox News host from serving as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee.

Putin gave Tucker an interview, posing as a great statesman and historian, and then he arranged the death in prison of one of his domestic political opponents. He followed that by arresting an American ballerina in Moscow, charging her with treason. 

If Tucker is a dupe, Biden is a bigger dupe, pretending to fight for freedom in Ukraine while failing to provide the former Soviet republic the means to fight and win. 

Biden’s fate is unknown, in terms of the election, but Tucker has already taken his place along others in the profession who appeared on bended knee before other communist dictators and communist terrorists. They include Walter Duranty, a Stalin apologist, and Herbert Mathews, a mouthpiece for Castro.   

Using the term “set up” takes Tucker off the hook for doing the dictator’s bidding. Tucker knew that he was dealing with a former KGB operative who has specialized in killing his enemies. The murder of Navalny, coming so soon after the Tucker interview, was another example of Putin’s power politics. As the Chinese communist Mao said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

All communists understand this principle, except the Russian communists perfected the use of the nerve agent Novichok to kill. 

Tucker wasn’t set up. Tucker set Putin up on a platform where he could pontificate without serious interruption. He dominated Tucker. Then Putin issued a statement with more powerful connotations when Navalny was declared dead from “sudden death syndrome.” 

Putin sent another message with his gift of a Russian-made limousine to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported “the gift serves as a clear demonstration of the special personal relations between the top leaders of the (North Korea) and Russia.” 

Perhaps Putin is not so much an “ex-communist” but an active communist to the present day. But to admit this fact undermines the story line peddled by some “conservatives” that Putin is somehow a Christian patriot who opposes the “New World Order.”  

Will the murder of Navalny somehow change their opinion of Putin?

Probably not. 

Look at the disgraced Alex Jones suggesting that the Western intelligence agencies somehow murdered Navalny in a Russian prison. Alex Jones is a long-time stooge of the Russian propaganda apparatus who is now on the verge of financial bankruptcy because of court judgments finding him guilty of spreading lies about the deaths of kids at Sandy Hook. 

He asks, “Why would Putin kill somebody who’s unpopular, who’s in prison, and then give the Western establishment a big win?”

No matter how “unpopular” Navalny was, he was considered a threat to Putin. Even though he was in prison, he was a symbol of opposition. He had to go. Putin is paranoid. 

But understanding Putin’s anti-Americanism does not mean that the Congress should vote for $60 billion for Ukraine to send a message to the Russian dictator. Of the $60.7 billion for Ukraine, Associated Press says $38.8 billion would go to U.S. factories that make missiles, munitions, and other gear. 

This is their last-ditch appeal – money for Ukraine is a U.S. jobs program.

However, I must conclude that after two years of this war, the people around Biden do not want Ukraine to win the war. If we had a president like Reagan in the Oval Office, I would think differently.

To understand how Democrats in office start wars and then lose them is not isolationism.

Speaking to the Munich Security Conference, Republican Senator J.D. Vance noted that  “…we don’t make enough munitions to support a war in Eastern Europe, a war in the Middle East, and potentially a contingency in East Asia. So the United States is fundamentally limited.”

We are “limited” because of the push for a “green economy” dependent on China which forces our allies to buy Russian and Iranian oil.  

Vance cited the following example: “The PAC-3, which is a Patriot interceptor, Ukraine uses in a month what the United States makes in a year. The Patriot missile system is on a five-year backorder, 155-millimeter artillery shells are on more than a five-year backorder. We’re talking in the United States about ramping up our production of artillery to 100,000 a month by the end of 2025. The Russians make close to 500,000 a month right now at this very minute.”

Summing up, he says, “So the problem here vis-à-vis Ukraine is America doesn’t make enough weapons, Europe doesn’t make enough weapons, and that reality is far more important than American political will or how much money we print and then send to Europe.”

The answer, quite clearly, is for Europe, led by Germany, to rearm. 

At the same time, Vance observed, “We have to remember that despite a lot of the hand-wringing, and I’ve heard a lot of it in private meetings and public meetings, Donald Trump was maybe the best president at deterring Russia in a generation. In fact, the only time that Russia has not invaded a foreign country over the last 20 years was the four years that Donald Trump was President.” 

Regarding Putin’s latest assassination, Vance called Navalny “a brave person,” adding, “His death is a tragedy. I don’t think that he should have been in prison. I don’t think that he should have been killed in prison. And I condemn Putin for doing it. But here’s the problem: it doesn’t teach us anything new about Putin.”

We’ve known for a very long time that Putin is a dictator who kills his enemies. My book, Back from the Dead: The Return of the Evil Empire, is ten years old but tells the story of how Putin is assembling a global coalition of communist regimes and anti-American movements. 

After Russia invaded Ukraine (again) under Biden, I wrote a column, ‘Saving America by Saving Ukraine,”  but I now believe we must save America first. And that means understanding the dangers of Putin and his regime but also understanding the domestic situation under Biden and the Democrats. These people do not want the United States to win. They don’t want Ukraine to win and they don’t want Israel to win. 

“You win wars with weapons, and the West doesn’t make enough weapons,” Vance explained.  

As America tries to build more, at a very slow rate, the people of Ukraine suffer and wait. It's clear Biden doesn't care about their fate. If he did, he would have acted before now and he would not have encouraged an "incursion" from Russia in the first place.  

What Vance says is not isolationism. It is realism. And that realism means that so-called “conservatives” and “Christians” rooting for Putin must wake up before they lose their own country to an enemy on the march here and abroad.