WorldNetDaily touted Tucker Carlson's softball interview with the Russian dictator and his naive propaganda tour of Moscow -- then tried to laughably argue that Donald Trump is being treated just like Alexei Navalny, whom Putin had killed in prison.
By Terry Krepel Posted 5/28/2024
WorldNetDaily has long beena booster of Vladimir Putin and his authoritarian, LGBT-hating vision for Russia, and that didn’t change when he invaded Ukraine — in fact, its affinity for the dictator has arguably grown. A Dec. 28 article reprinted from the discredited, far-right Gateway Pundit, written by Jim Hoft, cheered that Putin is putting right-wing narratives into school textbooks:
A new Russian history book for 11th grade students claims former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election “as a result of obvious electoral fraud by the Democratic Party.”
Even the Kremlin knows the 2020 elections were stolen!
[...]
Apparently, the Kremlin is more honest than our own Pravda media.
No, it’s not, but we assume Putin made it worthwhile to Hoft to write up this propaganda.
When Tucker Carlson (of whom WND is also a fan) flew to Moscow to do a softball interview with Putin, WND was completely on board. It published the transcript of a Feb. 6 video in which Carlson tried to defend the interview and whined that Western journalists had little interest in interviewing an aggressive warmongerer — and it certainly didn’t note how dumb and self-aggrandizing his defense was. Bob Unruh further defended the interview from critics in a Feb. 7 article, with a little help from Elon Musk:
Such is the state of censorship around the globe today that elites who are in power in multiple ways were so enraged by the fact Tucker Carlson interviewed Vladimir Putin that they attacked Carlson, suggesting censorship, travel bans, and more.
It seems that the old journalism trope about interviewing those whose decisions and actions are affecting – even killing – people so the world knows them a little better, is gone.
But even as officials in various countries were suggesting travel bans, and more, against Carlson, X’s Elon Musk was throwing their ideology back in their face.
“Arrest those calling for his arrest!” he charged on his social media platform.
Not only did WND provide its own link to the interview itself, Bob Unruh wrote his own Putin propaganda piece on it in a Feb. 8 article:
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with first-strike journalist Tucker Carlson, says his sources have revealed to him that Joe Biden is “not running the country.”
Biden’s policies since he’s been in office have portrayed America as a weak, vacillating nation blown back and forth by the winds of social ideologies that’s he’s emphasized.
Those ideologies include transgenderism and abortion, which Biden is insisting on imposing around the globe; global warming, on which he is demanding to spend trillions of dollars; and undermining the nation’s elections by trying to ban President Donald Trump from the 2024 election.
Biden’s age, 81, and his multiple mental blunders and verbal gaffes have just added evidence to that conclusion.
Putin had comments on all of those topics.
[...]
To Americans, Putin would say, “Our message is Russia is not your enemy. We don’t want war. We’re ready for peace. Your leaders seek conflict. This is not what we want. Russia stands for its own people. We do not want what is not ours.”
Unruh failed to mention the fact that, by invading Ukraine, Russia indisputably wanted this war; instead, he continued to play stenographer by uncritically forwarding more claims: “Did we invade or were we invaded? Look at the history. Look at the people living there. Historically it’s we who were invaded and are simply fighting back now. The lands and people are Russian and we will have again what was always ours.” Unruh also ignored that Carlson failed to offer any pushback on Putin repeating Nazi narratives and spouting revisionist history by blaming Poland for Germany invading it; Carlson merely gushed that Putin was offering “a sincere expression of what he thinks.”
WND largely ignored widespreadcriticism of the Carlson’s softballs to Putin, only republishing a Daily Caller article quoting Hillary Clinton calling Carlson a “useful idiot” and publishing a Feb. 12 column by Daniel McCarthy stating that Putin’s revisionist history shows that he’s “fighting a war he can’t win against forces he doesn’t understand” (though he offered no criticism of Carlson).
When Carlson dropped another video a few days later touting the wonders of Moscow, WND uncritically posted that one too. WND was certainly not going to raise questions about the claims he made glorifying the city — presumably to further puff up Putin. Meanwhile, more honest media outlets pointed out the flaws in Carlson’s praise:
In a short video segment recorded in Moscow, Carlson shops at a local grocery store and marvels that groceries to feed a Russian family for a week cost perhaps a quarter as much as similar groceries would cost in the United States. This enraged him. But Russia’s per capita GDP is about $15,000, compared with America’s, which is about $76,000. Stuff costs more in rich countries than in poorer ones. Carlson should go shopping in Mexico, where his groceries would also be much cheaper. Perhaps he would gain newfound respect for the Mexican government.
Carlson also marvels at the grandeur of a subway station, contrasting Moscow’s subway favorably with New York’s. While it’s true that the Russian capital’s subways are excellent, the stations are so grand there because they were built by Joseph Stalin at huge public expense to showcase the superiority of Soviet Communism. In contrast, New York’s subways are a product of capitalism, having been built and operated through public-private partnerships of various kinds, which are more budget-conscious.
Laura Hollis, meanwhile, used her Feb. 15 column to endorse authoritarian leaders over the messiness that can happen in the U.S. because they make the trains run on time, or something:
Tucker Carlson’s critics will no doubt point out the authoritarian control of the governments that run the clean and safe cities he praised – just as they criticize El Salvador’s recently reelected President Nayib Bukele, who has cleaned up that small country with widespread arrests and incarceration of tens of thousands of gang members whose rampant crime made El Salvador unlivable.
The United States is hardly in a position to criticize El Salvador. Under the guise of “freedom,” the elites in our entertainment industry, media and academia routinely promote behavior that is both personally and societally destructive. At the same time, those in control of our government – which is increasingly authoritarian – use their power to go after Christians who are peacefully trying to persuade pregnant women to keep their babies. They attack parents trying to keep porn out of school libraries and classrooms, and biological males out of their daughters’ sports teams, locker rooms and bathrooms. They allow roving mobs to burn whole sections of cities, killing dozens and doing billions of dollars in damage, but prosecute those who attempt to defend those businesses and their owners, just as they prosecute individuals who defend themselves, or defend helpless passengers on city subways.
Our government censors those trying to tell the American public the truth. It imports crime and poverty by allowing migrants to pour into this country by the millions, ignoring the potential terrorists, the gang members who will go on to commit violent crimes, those who traffic women and children for sex slavery or import the fentanyl that’s killing 100,000 Americans a year. And in “no bail” states like New York and Illinois, migrants who do commit crimes are put back on the streets, able to re-offend.
At least the authoritarian governments in some countries use their power to enforce order. Ours uses its power to facilitate chaos.
WND did, however, also publish a rare dissent in the form of a Feb. 15 column by David Harsanyi:
If you’re wealthy, I imagine, Moscow is pretty great. This is true of most European cities. When you’re an American tourist, you tend to stay in clean and beautiful city centers, eat at the best spots and wander around the most attractive areas of town. In Europe, you get to see onion domes that were built by serfs dotting the skyline. I’m sure it’s neat.
It is also true that if you’re an average person, Moscow is awful. The average Muscovite is most likely to live in some grim outlying apartment complex, many of which were built during the Soviet era. That’s if they’re lucky. Many Russians live in Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk and Ufa. Russia’s per capita yearly GDP is around $13,000. In the United States, it is around $83,000. It’s around $46,000 in Mississippi, our poorest state. Most Russians are living in what most Americans would consider poverty.
[...]
Carlson often talks about the attacks on free speech and free inquiry. Well, neither exists for the people in Moscow in any real way. Russia is an authoritarian state. Simply because Democrats have turned on Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t make him any less terrible.
The decadeslong effort of the American Left to portray the U.S. as a backward hellhole is finally paying off. One hopes the Right will not follow suit – though some populists are already starting to sound indistinguishable from the average progressive leftist.
That narrative flamed out, but WND wasn’t done fluffing Carlson over his Moscow misadventures. Bob Unruh wrote in a Feb. 26 article:
A report has surfaced that is leaving fans of popular American journalist Tucker Carlson, who recently traveled to Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin, stunned: He was targeted by a plot to assassinate him with a bomb.
A new report published by The Gateway Pundit explains, “A young man has reportedly just been arrested in Moscow in connection with an attempted assassination of Tucker Carlson. According to reporter Simon Ateba, the man who has been arrested was reportedly being paid by Ukrainian intelligence to plant an explosive device in a vehicle used by Tucker while he was there to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin.”
[...]
The report credited the “Russian Counter-Terrorism Unit” for halting the scheme.
The report said a Moscow man was arrested and accused of accepting a promise of payment, $4,000, from Ukrainian intelligence to blow up a car apparently being used by Carlson.
The fact that the discredited Gateway Pundit is Unruh’s source is a big red flag. Another one appears in the Community Notes attached to the tweet by ranty journalist Simon Ateba embedded in the article: The source for the claim is something called the Intel Drop, a purveyor of fake news and “a known pro-Kremlin disinformation website.” Unruh would not have told his readers this otherwise — it’s purely an accident that his pro-Tucker, pro-Putin propaganda was debunked.
Trump = Navalny
WorldNetDaily’s fanboyism for Carlson’s softball interview of Putin and his naively gushing tour of Moscow didn’t age well for either WND or Carlson. A few days after Carlson returned from Russia, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny — imprisoned under harsh conditions on trumped-up charges, presumably on Putin’s orders — died in prison (also presumably on Putin’s orders).
Surprisingly (or perhaps not), WND’s response to Navalny’s death largely centered around exploiting it for right-wing political purposes — specifically, laughably insisting that Donald Trump is being treated exactly like Putin treated Navalny. Mike Pottage huffed in a Feb. 19 column:
The headline read “Putin critic Alexei Navalny dead at 47, Russian officials say,” and the story quotes U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken as saying the death of a Russian prisoner demonstrates Russia is rotten to its core.
That was not very diplomatic of the American secretary of state.
The Marxists in American government differ little from the Marxists in the Russian government.
Blinken put it this way: Navalny’s “death in a Russian prison and the fixation and fear of one man only underscores the weakness and rot at the heart of the system that Putin has built.”
This from a man who attacks Israel and uses Ukraine to carry out a war against Russia. His message today. Russia is bad. His message tomorrow. Donald J. Trump is a Russian agent.
Pottage then even more laughably (and baselessly) claimed that violent Capitol riot insurrectionists are getting the Navalny treatment:
Who cares if Blinken talks to other countries about dead prisoner Alexie [sic] Navalny? Is Blinken going to recommend going to war over the death of someone in a Russian prison. If so, what about Epstein? The arrogance of American foreign policy is astounding.
Has Blinken expressed any concern for the Jan. 6 prisoners icarcerated [sic] for unspecific misdemeanor offenses in 2021? And, is the U.S. going to try and dictate to the system of justice used in all nations? Is it our business, and should we be preaching to others while our cities burn, our prisons are being emptied, and criminals are handed, essentially, parking tickets for violent acts?
Pottage then even more baselessly insisted that the U.S., not Russia, is responsible for the war in Ukraine:
Is the Biden administration any better than the Putin administration? How, in fact, is it different? For starters, Putin is not senile.
Team Biden’s leadership is the language of “Russia, Russia, Russia,” and now there is actual war with Russia financed and supplied by the USA.
If the purpose of this war was to save the Ukrainian people from Russia, it has successfully killed more than 400,000 of them. When we have killed off half-million folks, can we declare victory and go home? How does Mr. Diplomacy, Antony Blinken, square the surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan as an urgent part of American diplomacy with the resurgence of war, this time in Ukraine?
Pottage concluded by whining:
Now Team Biden is at war with Russia, and the conflict is used as a bludgeon against the political opponents of the Democratic Party. Why? Because the party does not look upon the Republican Party as a group with different opinions. It views the GOP as “the enemy.” Team Biden treats the leading Republican candidate for president as a common criminal.
The truth is the Democratic Party would do to Donald Trump precisely what they allege happened to Alexei Navalny.
Andy Schlafly followed the same template in his Feb. 20 column:
The hue and cry about the recent death of Putin critic Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison overlooks that Biden and the Deep State are trying to imprison Trump until he dies, too. Anti-Trumpers in our country have been misusing the legal system with a vengeance ever since Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Trump compared Navalny’s death, while under a three-decade prison sentence, to the relentless lawfare to imprison and bankrupt himself. Some scoffed at that comparison, but Biden and his minions are trying to treat Trump as Putin reportedly mistreated Navalny.
Trump posted on Truth Social, “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.”
President Trump properly commuted the 14-year sentence of Democrat Rod Blagojevich, but Biden has not pardoned or released any of the Trump supporters who have received even longer sentences for non-violent activity. While pro-Trump protesters are imprisoned in a Gulag, as Navalny was in Russia, Biden and his media supporters applaud.
Biden’s prosecutors demanded a 33-year prison sentence for Enrique Tarrio for a Jan. 6-related protest even though Tarrio was not even at the Capitol that day. Tarrio received a 22-year sentence, while other Trump supporters were sentenced to more than 15 years, and it seems likely some will die in prison as Navalny did.
Schlafly censored the fact that Tarrio was the ringleader of the insurrection plot, so his actual presence at the riot was not necessary. His whining continued:
Biden’s secretary of homeland security, the recently impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, has personally prevented Biden’s political rival RFK Jr. from receiving customary Secret Service protection despite multiple criminal intrusions of his home and an armed thug pretending to be a U.S. Marshal showing up at an RFK Jr. campaign event. Yet anti-Trumpers have remained silent about this mistreatment by Biden of his rival.
This is another issue the GOP-majority House could hold a vote on, enacting a resolution calling on Biden to provide Secret Service protection for his political rivals. RFK Jr. is polling at 7% nationwide, which is more than enough to justify providing him with the same protection presidential candidates have typically received in prior elections.
Northwestern law professor Steven Calabresi calls the recent New York judgment of $355 million plus interest against Trump and his family “a travesty and an unjust political act rivaled only in American politics by the killing of former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton by Vice President Aaron Burr.”
When liberals complain about a regime misusing its power against a rival, they should look first at how Biden is doing this.
Laura Hollis played the dishonest Trump-is-Navalny card in her Feb. 22 column:
Stories like that of Navalny have traditionally served as cautionary tales about the concentration of power and the superiority of the U.S. system of government. Dictators are laws unto themselves, but America is “a country of laws and not of men,” or so the saying goes.
And yet, what we are seeing in case after case – at the federal, state and local levels of government – is the radical abandonment of that principle in favor of shredding the law to “get” whoever the government has decided the desired target is.
And in many (though not all) of these cases, that target is Donald Trump.
In Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis is prosecuting Trump for “election interference” under a statute written to go after the Mafia. The case has holes in it big enough to drive a truck through, but no matter.
[...]
At the moment, that seems to be limited (using the word loosely) to destroying their opponents’ reputations, their political careers, their businesses and their financial wherewithal.
At the moment.
But remember: If Vladimir Putin has his enemies murdered, it’s because he knows he can get away with it. The rule of law is supposed to protect us from abuses of power. If we allow it to be eroded, what’s to keep those in power here from reaching the same conclusion?
WND also published an outside article noting that Trump “praised” Navalny “being criticized for his initial response to his death,” which involved a “post on Truth Social that was widely criticized for omitting sympathy for the opposition leader,” as well as a syndicated column by Ben Shapiro stating that Putin “murdered” Navalny with nary a mention of Trump. As far as WND’s regular stable of columnists, it took until March 1 before one of them — James Zumwalt, who has been WND’s lone consistent critic of Putin — explicitly blamed Putin for Navalny’s death, declaring: “The KGB was officially dissolved on Dec. 3, 1991. Sadly, Putin demonstrates to the world more than three decades later its mindset has not been lost on him.”
