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Ian Bremmer on Putin and Tucker
What happened when Tucker Carlson met Vladimir Putin? Was it news, propaganda, theatre, or all three? Ian Bremmer breaks down what you need to know now in his latest Quick Take.
Ian weighs in on Tucker Carlson's highly-anticipated interview with Putin and why it revealed what he and all other megalomaniacs have in common. The two-hour sit-down dropped to much fanfare from all sides of the political spectrum. Will there be any fallout from Putin’s first interview with an American since the start of the “special military operation” in Ukraine?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take, but towards the end of your week. Why? Because a lot of us watched this interview between Vladimir Putin and Tucker Carlson. And isn't there a lot to talk about? And the answer is a little less than all of the hype but still worth discussing.
First, I mean, you know, I will admit to having posted a fair bit about the importance of this interview. Of course, in part, it's because I have a history talking about, studying, covering Russia. But also, because this is now entering almost the third year of war when the Russians have invaded Ukraine, it is increasingly not going very well for the Ukrainians and therefore not very well for the United States and its allies. And that means that the timing of this interview is important, especially in the context of a very heated, very divisive US election, when increasingly support for Ukraine is becoming a matter of political difference. And it wasn't six months ago, but it certainly is becoming so very rapidly now.
Secondly, I have absolutely no problem with the idea of interviewing dictators. I think it's important for people to understand what makes everyone tick - friends, adversaries, everyone around the world. The problem is, of course, that dictators usually don't respect free press. And in Russia in particular, the media is, an independent media shut down, and they're imprisoned. They're sometimes assassinated. And certainly, Putin is not someone that has a history of valuing people that ask him independent minded, tough questions.
And of course, that is not why Tucker Carlson was invited to interview Putin. He was invited because he is someone that historically has said that if he's on a side, he's not on the side of Ukraine, he's on the side of Russia, and he's given very favorable interviews with people that are ideologically aligned with Putin, like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the one European leader of a country that has consistently taken Putin's side more closely than he has the Americans and the Europeans. But having said all of that, even if the interview is not likely to be particularly fair or elucidating, it is important. And it's important because it's 2 hours with one of the most powerful people on the planet so in that regard, we do need to know what's being said.
So, let's talk a little bit about the interview itself. First point, no news was made. Substantively, we learned really nothing new. Putin going on a very long history lesson with tangents, going back to Genghis Khan and the Roman Empire. And maybe we should talk about the fact that the Roman Empire is on Putin's mind, too, just like so many people on Twitter. But that if anything was going to lose a large percentage of your audience, that was almost guaranteed to do so. I remember so many trips to Beijing and you'd meet with Chinese leaders, and the first 20 minutes were about Chinese leadership and rightful place in the world back in the 15th century. That's something you do when you're insecure. As the Chinese were doing better and as they were becoming a larger economy and feeling more comfortable in the rest of the world, and that more countries had to listen to them, they did less of that.
Putin, of course, doing worse. His economy now is smaller than Canada's, despite having the largest geographic landmass of any country in the world. All these important resources, more nuclear weapons even than the United States. But he's clearly not feeling very confident about that. Hence the need to give a huge history lesson to everyone that is willing to listen. And of course, you know, not much Tucker could do there. It's not like he's going to suddenly start interrupting the Russian leader. Really unclear how much of this would appeal to your typical Tucker Carlson audience. I mean, Putin's talk of a multipolar world is something I find fairly interesting. I do think that the global economic order is increasingly multipolar. The security order is not. It's still dominated by the United States. But that doesn't mean the US wants to be the world's policeman. And especially given the divisions inside the United States, it's very difficult for it to do so. And it's failed on many occasions. But I don't think that that's something that's really going to engage a lot of people that are talking about or listening to this interview.
It was interesting that Putin said that he hasn't talked to Biden since before the war. He said, “I can't remember the last time I talked to him.” I think the last time that they certainly last time they met in person was about six months before the war. I think it was in Geneva, it was 3 hours when Biden met with Putin and I mean, Biden, you know, he talks a lot about how he's spent a lot of time with Xi Jinping when they were both vice presidents, when they're both presidents, something he's proud of, this great man theory of politics that when you know someone and you engage with them, you can usually figure things out. He doesn't actually know Putin well. He's never really liked him. He doesn't respect him. It's obviously mutual. And clearly Putin finds the fact that Biden has not reached out to him personally as opposed to, say, Emmanuel Macron or other, let's say a Recep Erdogan from Turkey. That's something that the peaks that irritates him. He sees himself as leader of a great power.
And of course, the Americans at the highest level should be engaging. You know, I can see how a lot of what Putin had to say is interesting because it is the Russian perspective as engaged by a leader that we don't hear a lot from. But the biggest problem and it is a real problem in Putin's worldview is not on this stuff. That's all wrong. I mean, it is true. There are things he said that absolutely I am sympathetic to. NATO expansion is a challenge for Russia. How could it not be? But it's that he, like many great power types, like Kissinger, for example, consistently forgets about, intentionally forgets, about not even part of his worldview, one critical thing, and that is the agency of the countries involved: the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Czechs, the Latvians, none of them, none of these little countries have any agency at all in Putin's story.
These are countries that all wanted to join NATO. Why? Why did they want to join NATO? It's because they were worried about a Russia that behaves exactly as it has for the past 15 years in Georgia and in Ukraine and in so many other countries around the world. It's the idea that a great power gets to do whatever it wants and that human rights and war crimes, and those are for the little people. And, you know, the Americans have a hard time with a lot of this because the US is also not a signatory of the International Court of Justice. The Americans, you know, frequently ignore human rights when it's not of interest to them. And there's a lot of charges of hypocrisy in the way the Americans support the Ukrainians, but don't care so much about the Palestinians. And those are fair points. But you cannot compare the United States to what Russia has been doing precisely because even given the power, the unchecked power of the United States and the hypocrisy and the human rights violations and all the challenges, the Russians have been consistent in their complete abrogation of any interest of human rights, of basic legal rights of their people, of all of their neighbors, and of the ability of other countries to make up their own mind.
And ultimately, the reason why Ukraine wanted to join NATO is not because the Americans entice them, but because the Ukrainians wanted out of Russian orbit. And fundamentally, even though the United States have given up on and have lost a lot of the values that made America great, you know, the end of World War II for example, still the United States, Americans at base think that people of the world have the right to decide their future. They have the right to self-determination. Even the Chinese, who are much closer friends of the Russians than they are the Americans or the Ukrainians, have consistently said that the Ukrainians have the right to self-determination. Yes, that even includes Crimea, according to the Chinese. Why would they say that? And because they do think that ultimately, they are a part of an international order that needs to be stable and needs to engage with other countries around the world, not only by dint of power.
They've got plenty of hypocrisy, too, but the Russians have given up on all of that. They've become chaos actors, and they want the destruction of the international order. I don't think that Tucker Carlson has done a great disservice with the interview that's been put forward. I don't think it matters very much. And I don’t think Elon Musk has done a great disservice in putting a couple of hours out. I don't think it matters all that much, but I do think it's important for people that watch this interview to recognize that the key thing that Putin does not care about is any rights of any other countries that aren't powerful. Other than the Russians to get things done. And that's something he should care about because, you know, part of the reason the Russians are so screwed right now compared to the United States and their allies is precisely because they're not all that powerful.
And you would think that if that's the philosophy that Putin takes to the bank, that he would understand the way it applies to his country, too. Of course, dictators, narcissists, megalomaniacs, they never think that the rules that should apply to them actually do when things don't go their way. They're all sort of great at what should work for them and not when things are more challenging. Not a surprise that that is the way a dictator responds. This interview was on his territory. It was his time, and he got his message out the way he wanted to. And ultimately, none of us are going to care all that much.
That is where we are, and I hope that that was interesting and useful. Be well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Tucker Carlson went all the way to Moscow for that?
If you were absolutely hankering for an extended lecture on the Varangian Guard, the Rurikid dynasty, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or other aspects of medieval and early Russian history, you were on cloud nine for the first 30 entire minutes of Tucker Carlson’s highly anticipated two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin Thursday night.
As for the remaining 90 minutes, here are five things we can tell you:
- On the big subjects, Putin said nothing new. He questioned the basis for Ukrainian sovereignty, blamed Western meddling and NATO expansion for the Ukraine war, and said Washington has treated Russia unfairly since the end of the Cold War. (You can see a rebuttal to this view here.)
- Putin was evasive about whether he’d accept an end to the Ukraine conflict along current lines (see Eurasia Group’s 2024 Top Risk #3). To be fair, why wouldn’t he be? With the war stalemated, Ukraine’s military command in upheaval, and US support in doubt, it would make little sense for Putin to commit to anything at a moment when he may shortly have the upper hand.
- Trump didn't figure much. Carlson asked him if he thought a new US administration would herald better ties with Russia, but Putin said only that Moscow could get along with any US that took Russia’s interests seriously. Donald Trump's absence was conspicuous but understandable: Carlson's audience may share some of Putin's world view (socially conservative nationalism) or his preferences (to stop US funding for Ukraine), but Putin himself is deeply unpopular in the US. Only 10% of Americans have a positive view of him. So while Putin would doubtless love to see Trump 2.0, he probably rightly understands that direct praise probably doesn't help Trump in a general election. More interesting was Putin's fulsome praise for Elon Musk: "There is no stopping [him] ... you need to find some common ground with him." Keeping the owner of Twitter/X and Starlink buttered up is smart.
- This interview won’t make waves in Russia. “Even by Russian state media standards, there was little here that would excite, let alone surprise, a Russian audience,” said Tinatin Japaridze, a Eurasian political risk analyst at Eurasia Group, though she said it would probably reflect well on Putin that a prominent American personality had flown all the way to Moscow to interview him.
- Or, for that matter, in the US. Clips of specific exchanges will probably circulate for a few days on social media, confirming the prior beliefs one way or another of … just about everybody.
Case in point: Carlson asked Putin whether a deal could be reached to free Evan Gershkovich, the American journalist being held in Russia on espionage charges. It has long been assumed Gershkovich would eventually be freed in a prisoner exchange. Putin suggested that this would be "a person, due to patriotic sentiments, [who] eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals … during the events in the Caucasus.” The FSB assassin Vadim Krasikov, currently imprisoned in Germany, fits this bill.
The Big picture: “If Putin hoped to change minds in the US, it’s pretty safe to say the interview will not accomplish this,” says Alex Brideau, head of Russia research at Eurasia Group.“He was consistent with his past statements offered to justify the invasion of Ukraine, along with his vague willingness to negotiate. But that was the extent of his message, and it’s not something that is going to have an effect on the debates in Washington.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that Putin did not mention Trump's name once during the interview. He did mention him once, but only once. See point #3 above for the revised analysis. We regret the error.
U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson speaks about his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Political Super Bowl
It’s a busy Thursday as we watch the Trump and the Supremes legal dance that could determine whether the former US president is eligible to run in November’s election. The Supreme Court hearing comes from the Colorado case, which argues that Donald Trump’s alleged involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, “insurrection” legally disqualifies him from running for President, something his team obviously opposes.
Don’t bet on Trump being disqualified by the conservative-dominated court, but in the long-shot scenario that he is – we won’t know a decision until likely just before Super Tuesday, March 5 – well, then, rewrite the playbook as to what happens next. “American Carnage 2” perhaps?
But first, it’s Super Bowl weekend, and while the tailgate conspiracy party over Taylor Swift’s presidential influence steams ever onward, the biggest political football continues to be support for Ukraine.
Last night, Republican senators refused to coordinate the play on Joe Biden’s domestic border deal, one that bundled in military support for Ukraine. Trump sacked any chance it had when he flexed his soon-to-be-the-nominee political muscle and demanded it not be passed. He is the Republican leader again, in every way but his actual election, and there are crisp little creases along the seams of the party where former opponents have folded.
Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., then picked up the fumbled ball and called an audible, saying he would try to pass a $95-billion bill focused solely on military support for Ukraine and Israel, but that also looks like it won’t get over the line.
Now what?
As the Feb. 24 second anniversary of the Ukraine war nears, the political game has profoundly changed as much as football changed in 19o6 when the forward pass was allowed. Only in politics, they’re now passing backward, instead of forward. Republicans can no longer rally support for a democracy fighting Vladimir Putin and illegal Russian expansion.
Trump’s first term signaled a neo-Republican isolationism and a refusal to honor longstanding foreign policy alliances, but with Ukraine suffering new military setbacks while facing deep shortages of equipment and soldiers, this is more urgent. It is handing Putin a win.
Without the $60 billion in US support – which pays for critical items such as HIMARS, Javelin, and Stinger missiles to take out Russian troops, tanks, and aircraft, and the heavy artillery ammunition the army needs for the grinding land battles – Ukraine will lose the eastern part of its country. As we called it in Eurasia Group’s 2024 Top Risks report, Ukraine will be partitioned. Putin wins.
Ukraine's security and continued US support for NATO’s Article 5 were once articles of faith. Now they are optional items on the foreign policy buffet menu. That is what has been normalized.
It’s not just a uniquely American issue. A consequential Angus Reid poll in Canadathis week revealed that both attention to and support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia is waning, especially among Conservative voters.
The poll found that the number of people saying Canada has offered “too much support” has doubled since the early weeks of the war. “One-quarter (25%) of Canadians believe their country is doing too much to assist Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion, up from 13% who said the same in May 2022. During the same interval, the number who say Canada is not doing enough has halved (38% to 19%),” according the Angus-Reid.
But here is the kicker. Of that group, Conservative voters make up the largest numbers. “The number of 2021 CPC voters who say Canada has done too much for Ukraine has more than doubled from 19 to 43% between May 2022 and now.”
Both in the US and Canada, the right is turning away from Ukraine. You might think that would pose some significant political challenges in a country like Canada, which has the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world, if anyone cared to notice. But that’s another thing the poll revealed ...
Turns out, people are tuning out from the war, even though things are more urgent than ever. “The number of Canadians following news of the conflict closely has dropped from 66 to 45% in that same period – a trend that holds for Canadians of all ages and political stripes.”
On a day when President Volodymyr Zelensky just removed top Gen. Valery Zaluzhny in a desperate effort to reboot his country’s military fortunes and perhaps shore up his own position domestically, the news from indifferent allies abroad is as bad as news from the front.
A newly confident Putin is about to strike again tonight, when he sits down with his sycophant Tucker Carlson for a two-hour, pre-approved … what to call this? A PR stunt? An interview? A propaganda fest?
Here is what to watch for:
- Will Putin reveal anything about negotiating a peace deal or simply try to sell Russia’s view of the invasion, a view Carlson has long supported, to the growing far right in North America and Europe?
- Will Putin say anything about Trump to try to influence the US election?
- Will this interview deepen the resolve of Republicans to block more Ukraine funding to undermine both Zelensky and Biden?
- Facts: What will be straight-up lies and BS, and what will be factual?
For people paying less and less attention to the facts on the ground in the war, this Putin ploy will garner millions of views and allow him to shape the political debate.
We will have Ian Bremmer's Quick Take reaction to the Putin interview later tonight on our social media channels, and we will have more fact-checking in tomorrow’s GZERO Daily, so watch for those.
So, as the political Super Bowl of politics is playing out in Ukraine right now, there is no doubt who’s ahead: Russia.
Tucker Carlson, Liberator?
Tucker Carlson visited Canada this week to “liberate” it from … from what exactly?
Well, that’s what thousands of people – including the premier of Alberta – came to Calgary and Edmonton to hear in packed arenas.
Tucker’s two-day liberation tour from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “authoritarian dictatorship” is timed perfectly around two political pieces of populist kindling: Trump’s march to victory in the US presidential primaries and a Canadian judge’s ruling that the Liberal government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act during the Trucker pandemic protest was “unreasonable” and unconstitutional.
It all sent a message: The populist forces are gathering and ready to take down Trudeau (and Biden) and save Canada from “disgusting decline.”
Here are the things destroying Canada, according to Liberator Carlson: mass immigration, medical assistance in dying (“genocide”), legalized pot, transgender people, the woke folks, the media, big tech, a “metrosexual” prime minister, anti-Christian groups, solar panels … and then, the great biggie, the authoritarian state itself, which exposed itself during the pandemic. “This is a destruction of you and your culture and your beliefs and your children and your future,” Tucker breathlessly summarized.
Pause for a moment on that sentence, because in it lies, perhaps, the most challenging dynamic facing democracies worldwide: hate disguised as anger. The stark casting of politics as a personal, apocalyptic battle over the imminent destruction of … everything. Your culture. Your beliefs. Your children. Your future.
In Tucker’s End-of-Days casting, this is not a mere election cycle, a debate of ideas, or even a culture war. It is a war. Period. Mao Zedong once said “politics is war without bloodshed,” but as the rhetoric keeps getting hotter and political opponents are increasingly viewed as personal enemies, the lines between politics and war are dangerously blurred. And it raises the question, how to respond to this?
The first thing to establish is that a fierce debate of ideas is the core of democracy. Freely disagreeing with others is the whole shemozzle here, so protecting and defending the right of people to say things you disagree with (outside of hate speech, etc.) is foundational. Disagreement doesn’t make someone the enemy; it makes them a partner in democracy. That’s why the arrest of a commentator from Rebel News as he chased down a Canadian minister was fundamentally wrong. And why having Carlson come to Canada is perfectly normal. It may have a political impact, but it was not and should not be banned. Questioning power and protecting speech is core democratic stuff.
It's also why debates and court cases over, say, the government’s use of the Emergencies Act in Canada are critical.
But contrary to Carlson’s distorted mirror, this happens all the time. That’s why willfully twisting facts, playing footsie with hate speech – Carlson’s stock in trade as he profits from paranoia – needs an equally robust response.
For example, the Emergencies Act is a controversial tool, but the fact is, it was heavily scrutinized when invoked. There was a vote in Parliament, a built-in sunset clause (it was only in use for nine days), an inquiry headed by Justice Paul Rouleau (whose scope included access to confidential cabinet documents), and court cases from civil liberties groups … who just won!
Hardly the hallmarks of a dictatorship. It is the robust debate about a government’s use and overuse of powers, which is ongoing in any democracy. Torquing this stuff as some kind of fascistic conspiracy erodes the hard work it took to build these check and balance systems in the first place.
On one hand, the media and politicians have to be extra transparent, open, and fair, and they should take criticism about their own biases and assumptions. On the other hand, they can’t be scared to check facts, call bullshit, and avoid promoting hate.
For example, as Carlson raged about the government’s overreach on COVID – “hey Canada forcing people to take an untested medicine is not a good idea” – he left out the fact that in January, February, and March of 2020, HE was one of the leading voices calling on the government to do MORE. “People you know will get sick …Some may die. This is real,” he said. In March, he actually visited Donald Trump in the White House to urge him to take stronger action. “Anybody who imagined that this was just media hype turned out to be wrong,” Carlson said. “Feb. 3 is the day that it was confirmed to me by a US government official that this was a huge problem and that a lot of people could die. That’s when I learned it. And that’s the night we went on the air and said, "Wow this is something you really need to worry about.’”
Did Tucker mention any of this during his liberation tour? Is calling out his own call for action against the dangers of COVID political bias or just fact-checking
the revisionist history he’s peddling?
I guess this used to be called “standards,” but standards of shame, debate, and humanity have been abolished by the anonymous shield of social media, the political efficacy of disinformation, and the profitability of anger. Both the far right and the far left, among other culprits, bear responsibility. This is not bothsidesism. The fringes of both political spectrums have destroyed the middle ground on a host of issues – the pandemic, Ukraine, Israel-Gaza – and made reasonable dialogue a helluva lot harder.
Where does it end up?
Look, people are scared about where we are headed, but let’s not arm up.
Maybe it’s just good to remind folks that in the US and Canada, though there are real and deep problems, we have it pretty darn good next to, well, almost anywhere.
In the US this week, inflation was 3%, wage growth was 3% and employment was 3%. Look around the world. That’s not bad.
It sure as heck doesn’t look like the apocalypse or like your children will be destroyed.
Wars require liberators. Democracies require candidates.
Trump's new rival, Vivek Ramaswamy
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a happy Monday to you. Want to turn to US domestic politics for this week's Quick Take in part because there's been a surge in the GOP among the candidates. We've had Trump way out in front, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the major challenger pretty much for the last several months until this last week, with an outsider Vivek Ramaswamy in a couple of polls showing up as number two. Certainly enjoying a surge. So thought it was worth taking a little bit of a look at him.
First of all, I mean, let's be clear, the big news remains the Trump indictments and the Democratic efforts to drive them. It's all about the politics. It is not about rule of law. That's what it should be if it were a properly functioning representative democracy. That is not the state of US politics right now. But aside from that, it's "is anyone a potential challenger to Trump on the GOP side?" And, you know, the idea that Trump is not going to participate in the Republican primary debates, as we see this Wednesday, is his political interest in showing that "I'm going to get this nomination and all the rest are pretenders to the throne." Completely understandable that that's the way he's handling that, but it's interesting to me that to the extent that anyone else is getting oxygen, it is the candidates that are most like him. In other words, those that are willing to take on his message that are proactively being supportive and engaging.
It is DeSantis and Vivek and that shouldn't surprise anyone in terms of where the Republican party is and is going as the Democratic party has increasingly become a party identified with urban elites and the Republican party increasingly with rural working and middle classes. And that is a grievance-based and anger-based "let's beat up on the establishment." It is not the center. Trump did very well as an outsider, not because his policies made a lot of sense, but rather because they really animated the emotional anger channeled the sense of disenfranchisement and otherness of people that felt like the elites were part of this shadowy, globalist deep state. Vivek Ramaswamy, in my view, has been the most effective at engaging on the political stage in that. He's basically portraying himself as the young Trump, as the person that can carry the mantle that, you know, if Trump is one more Covid episode away from not being with us,
Vivek is 38 years old. He's an entrepreneur, young kid. You know, he's an outsider. He is never been a candidate. Heck, he's barely voted most of the presidential elections. He hasn't participated in, said he was jaded at the time. That is a feature, not a bug for someone who is, you know, wants to run on "I'm not a politico, I'm not a part of Washington. I have no political experience, and that makes me better." I mean, he proactively said like, "I want to run the government the way Elon runs Twitter/X, which I'm not clear that appeals to people that care about governance, but that's not the point. This is anger and people that want to hurt the folks that are benefiting from the fruits of governance over the course of the past, say, 40 to 50 years in the United States.
He's aligned with Trump. He's aligned with Tucker Carlson, that's the lane here. I definitely see in his policy statements that, you know, anti-woke but more effective in his rhetoric on that front than DeSantis has been. Talking about the global reset versus the great uprising. In other words, anti world economic forum, anti-woke, anti global control, anti deep state, anti all of this, you know, anything that feels like the forces that you don't understand that are in control of you, Vivek is opposed to them. It's very much like Trump's drain the swamp, which again, of all the things that Trump did, drain the swamp was, you know, the one he was least actually interested in. Fantastic on the rhetoric, and then appointed all the CEOs and billionaires to run cabinet to reduce taxation. I mean, the men north of Richmond did fantastically well under Trump and likely would under Vivek.
But that's not the point. The point is not appealing to an analytic reasoned policy debate. It is appealing to a sense of anger, and we want to burn it down. And in that regard, Vivek has been most effective in some of his policy statements that really antagonizing the mainstream media. I saw this in particular, with a CNN interview that he did in talking about Russia and Ukraine and in saying, "hey, I'm going to make the Ukrainians give up some of their territory and say there won't be any NATO for Ukraine because I want to pull Russia away from China." And I mean, you can just imagine this is absolutely intended to drive mainstream media crazy, and they do, and it's a massive amount of attention for this young outsider. And he's winning, not winning for the nomination, of course, that's not the point.
But he's winning in the performative sweep that allow him to do far better from personal career perspective on the back of deciding to run. Running this presidential campaign is an absolute no brainer for someone like Ramaswamy. He'll have bigger book deals, higher speaking fees, has a decent shot of being on a Trump cabinet if Trump were to potentially win. But he also is setting himself up to be one of the younger forces that can wear the populist MAGA mantle assuming the GOP stays intact beyond this presidential cycle. And so in that regard, I find him a very important cultural phenomenon and political phenomenon. We are going to see more of this as long as American political dysfunction continues to be a primary driving force, as long as the US is more polarized, riven with more disinformation, more mistrust, and more feeling of illegitimacy than any of the other G-7 advanced industrial democracies.
This is the lane to run on, at least on the right. I think we'll see more of it on the left as well. But again, the demographics of where the GOP is doing well, it aligns particularly with this form of nativism and populism. And I do feel like Vivek has been very effective there. We'll see on Wednesday night with the debate how he does on a stage with, you know, ten folks, many of whom are fully part of the GOP establishment. I suspect he'll do very well because this is really meant for small sound bites social media, and he's going to be an effective bomb thrower there. So will Chris Christie, by the way, who's a fantastic debater and is the one that is really taking Trump on individually, but of course, Trump is going to be talking to Tucker Carlson who has said in his private texts that he can't stand the guy, thinks he's a lunatic.
But that doesn't matter because they occupy the same lane. And as political entrepreneurs for themselves, this is exactly what they should be doing, which is teaming up to make the establishment debate that the party forces want to have less relevant. And it makes Tucker Carlson more relevant to his fans and to his revenues as bottom line, and it makes Trump more relevant too. So that's where we are this week, kind of depressing state of affairs in terms of US politics, but from an analysis perspective, got to get that right either way. Hope everyone's well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Tucker Carlson returns: fact-checking his Ukraine episode
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A Quick Take for you in the middle of the week.
I wanted to respond to Tucker Carlson's first online episode of what presumably is his new show. A lot of folks were saying that there's no fact checking on it. There's no community notes, there's supposed to be community notes to assess these standards. Why isn't someone going to do that? I certainly have no intention of doing that on a regular basis for Tucker Carlson's show, but because he's talking primarily about Russia and Ukraine, a topic I do know a fair amount about, spent a lot of time on, I thought that this could be helpful and, hey, if you want to put some community notes on it and they allow you to do that, have a party.
So let me go through some of the quotes that Tucker Carlson made in the show and I'll just kind of give you sort of my assessment on what we think about it. It's primarily about the explosion of this dam in Russian occupied Ukraine and the humanitarian and strategic implications of that. So couple points here.
First, Tucker says that the dam was built by the Russian government, not true. It was built in the early '50s actually by the Soviet Union, which of course is not the same thing as the Russian government. That's be presumably likes thinking that the United States should give Boston and Philadelphia back to the British. The dam, Carlson says, is Russia's own infrastructure. Actually, it's Ukrainian infrastructure, not Russian. Since becoming independent back in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine has been the legal owner of the dam. Russia has zero claim to it other than through occupation by force. They do occupy this territory, they have annexed the territory illegally and almost no countries in the world have recognized the legality of that annexation, not even a country like China has done that. Considers it to be Ukrainian and that Ukraine has territorial integrity over it.
He says it's not a military tactic, but an act of terror. I agree it's an act of terror. Classifying the blowing up of the dam as an act of terror doesn't mean it was not all so a military tactic. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians have accused the other side of terrorism, but both also argue that the other side destroyed the dam as a way to gain military advantage. Now, there are various arguments as to why they have had military motives. The most plausible one is that the Russians saw the resulting flooding as a way to block any Ukrainian attacks across the river of Dnipro. And it just happened just as Ukraine has intensified its ground attacks as this counteroffensive begins, which has led to a lot of speculation that a long awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive is indeed beginning or imminent. And if it was an accident, which it may well have been, it is a remarkable coincidence that it coincided with Russian concerns about the launching of that counteroffensive.
Okay, Tucker says, blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine but it hurts Russia more. This is Tucker's central argument, so it deserves the most detailed focus. All of the damage from the dam's destruction has occurred within Ukraine and almost all of the people that are impacted are Ukrainians, are ethnic Ukrainians, and just because certain regions are presently occupied by Russia does not stop them from being part of Ukraine. The damage inflicted by the flooding occurred in both Russian and Ukrainian controlled parts of Ukraine. Ukraine's Prosecutor General said that about 25,000 needed to be evacuated from the Russian controlled areas, about 17,000 from the Ukrainian controlled areas. Initial outside estimates seem to think that that's pretty close to the balance we're talking about, but even in the Russian controlled areas, a majority of the local population are likely to be pro Ukrainian and pro Zelensky. In the Kherson region, where the dam is located, Zelensky got 83% of the vote back in the 2019 presidential election.
Now, it could be argued that as these areas are presently Russian-occupied, Ukraine has an incentive to inflict economic damage on them, but that's not a very good argument. Ukraine's military objective is to recapture these areas from Russia as soon as possible, and hence the counteroffensive. Now, that may or may not succeed, but it's a reasonable goal and the Ukrainians certainly believe it's achievable, in which case they're going to have to foot the bill for rebuilding them.
As far as Crimea is concerned, the economic damage inflicted on crime Crimea will be relatively minor compared to the damage inflicted on regions close to the dam, and that includes water accessibility where the water had been cut off to Crimea for a long time during the annexation/occupation by the Russians since 2014. And that's been certainly an economic crimp, but has not been a disaster for them or stopped their ability to continue to develop it.
That's just considering the economic impact of the dam's destruction. From a military point of view, Russia's likely to benefit a little bit more than Ukraine from the dam's destruction. The flooding of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region means it's now very difficult to attack across the river. And that benefits Russia more, since Ukraine in this region is presently on the offensive. You're shortening the frontline as a consequence, that benefits the defender more than the attacker Ukraine because it allows the defender to concentrate more forces to meet the offensive and reduces the attacker's options. Also, since the attacker has the initiative, they know where the attack is going to be. So a benefit from a long front, they benefit from having more uncertainty that forces the defender to guess and to spread out.
The military benefits from the dam's destruction are pretty questionable in the sense that that is not likely to be where the Ukrainians are going to focus most of their attacks. If you want to break the Russian land bridge from Russian to Crimea, you're likely to hit probably about 100 miles away from that. But to the extent that one side is seen as having a military benefit, it's more likely to be the Russians. For the Ukrainians to benefit militarily from the disruption of Russian defenses along the river they'd need have a large and secret amphibious force ready to pounce across the river and the flooded areas we'll see over the next few weeks, but that looks very improbable at this point.
Tucker Carlson also says, nothing dark here, just too middle-aged people celebrating the killing of a population. He's talking about Lindsey Graham and President Zelensky, and they're clearly talking about the deaths of Russian soldiers who were dying in battle as a result of being sent by Putin to conquer Ukraine. I did not enjoy hearing the way they talked about that, but they're not talking about the killing of the Russian population. Hardly any Russian civilians have died as a result of Ukrainian actions during the war. That's in contrast to Ukrainian civilians killed by the Russians, an estimated 40,000 Ukrainian civilians have died in the war so far. Tens of thousands of civilians are believed to have died during the Siege of Mariupol alone. The AP reported back in December that the actual death toll there could be three times greater than an early estimate of 25,000. The irony here is that Russia claims Mariupol as part of Russia, and therefore it regards the people that it killed, civilians, as Russians.
It's not like Vladimir Putin is anxious to wage war on him himself, another Tucker Carlson quote, people who think that Russia did it, think Putin is the kind of man who'd shoot himself to death in order to annoy you. Russia is not the injured party here. The vast majority of the cost of this incident will be incurred by Ukrainians, and even if you granted that this is somehow more damaging to Russia than Ukraine, that doesn't remotely mean that Putin couldn't be behind it. After all, this whole war has been a massive exercise in Russia shooting its own foot. Putin also has a long track record of disregard for Russian lives. The 1999 apartment bombings, the MH-17 downing, the indiscriminate killing of ethnic Russians in Bakhmut, all of these sorts of things. That I think is critical context that of course we don't see from Tucker.
He says, people who blame Putin do so because they think that Putin is evil and evil people do evil things purely for the dark joy of being evil. In the specific case, Putin attacked himself, which is the most evil thing you can do, and therefore perfectly in character for a man that evil. This is a straw man, and serious analysts should not believe that Putin is primarily motivated by evil. Right or wrong, there are rational explanations for why Putin might have done this. He got away with annexation of Ukraine in 2014, very limited consequences, especially after the US disaster in Afghanistan. There were reasons to believe if you were Putin that you could do this and you'd succeed and get away with it. Certainly, he believed it was going to be a very short war. That's what he told his buddy Xi Jinping, and that they would be occupying Kyiv and the Zelensky government would be removed. That's not the way it turned out. But again, his mindset is not one that is being seen as motivated primarily by evil. It's a mindset of realpolitik of how he can win against the West that has been trying to repress and keep him down. I don't happen to agree with it, but it's very different from saying that Putin is the devil incarnate.
No one in the media pundit class seemed to entertain the possibility that Ukraine did it, they believe no chance of that because Zelensky is too decent for terrorism, literally a living saint. It's another straw man. Plenty of analysts and journalists, myself included, have explicitly considered that possibility and disgusted it online and through essays. Same thing with Nord Stream, by the way, where I made very clear consistently that it was unlikely that the Russians were behind the bombing of Nord Stream. Serious people do not think that Zelensky is a saint, and we didn't get censored, I didn't get censored for putting out that I thought Zelensky was behind the Nord Stream bombing. In fact, not only did I put it out online but I repeatedly discussed it on national television, on cable news, on CNN and MSNBC and Fox. No problem.
Then he says, Ukraine's shifty and dead eyed Jewish president is rat like and an oligarch, a persecutor of Christians and a friend of BlackRock, a person who'd enjoy flooding villages or starting a famine. It's painful to even quote that, these are all anti-Semitic dog whistles with a sprinkling of blood liable, plain and simple. Tucker Carlson knows exactly the kind of filth that he's spreading here, has no place on the media, which is part of why I suspect Fox is glad to be rid of him and frankly has no space on Twitter either.
The case made by the establishment for Americans to support Ukraine's tautological, Tucker concludes, "it is vital that you support Ukraine because it is vital that Ukraine is supported by you." There are real policy discussions here, both good and bad, that have been articulated, including by me, as to why America should support Ukraine, as to why America should have supported Ukraine back in 2014. That doesn't mean there's no risk involved, doesn't mean there's no danger involved, and certainly the fact that the world's largest holder of nuclear weapons is now seen as a war criminal by the G-7 and the international criminal court means that we have a more dangerous world. But Putin is ultimately much more responsible for that, and we need to remember that too.
And the fact that the United States has inconsistently stood up for its principles of democracy and self-determination historically, and have sometimes even overtly breached them as they did in the war to remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq, does not mean that when the United States is standing up for the right things, for the values that the country was founded on, that it should somehow stop. And here I take very profound issue with Tucker Carlson and what he's trying to do with his show, at least with this first episode. Having said that, I take heart in the fact that the vast majority of Democrats and Republicans in the country don't agree with him, and I expect that will continue to be the case.
So, hope you found this worthwhile and I'll talk to you all soon.
- Tucker, the Twitter phoenix ›
- Tucker Carlson out at Fox News ›
- Tucker Carlson wants to invade Canada ›
- Canada may pull the plug on Fox News ›
- Podcast: The past, present and future of political media - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Bremmer on Putin and Tucker - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Explains: Putin's Ukraine gamble - GZERO Media ›
- Ian Explains: Will Ukraine ever negotiate with Russia? - GZERO Media ›
- Ukraine's Kursk invasion complicates Putin's war efforts - GZERO Media ›
Canada may pull the plug on Fox News
Back in March, before Tucker Carlson tried to convince America to invade Canada, and before he was fired in the fallout from the $787 million Dominion settlement, he did a segment that could see Fox fade to black in Canada.
In the rant — about a school shooting in Nashville, where a transgender man killed three children and three adults — Carlson warned about “trans terrorism,” saying Christans should prepare to be targeted for violence by the trans movement, a “deranged and demonic ideology.”
In the United States, with its strong First Amendment protections of free speech and weak broadcast regulation, Carlson’s rant was just another salvo in the culture war. But in Canada, it could have regulatory consequences, because Carlson attacked Egale, a Canadian LGBTQ organization, saying it was lying about violence against trans people, which it wasn’t.
A week after the broadcast, Egale sent a complaint to the CRTC — the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (Canada’s version of the Federal Communications Commission) — asking that it ban Fox News.
“To position trans people in existential opposition to Christianity is an incitement of violence against trans people that is plain to any viewer,” wrote Egale.
Egale has a case. Canadian law forbids broadcasting material that “is likely to expose an individual or a group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt.” Describing trans people as “demonic” would seem to qualify.
The regulator, which is run at arm’s length from the government, has banned other channels. Last March, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the CRTC announced that RT and RT France — which are controlled by the Russian government — could no longer be carried by Canadian cable outlets.
“Foreign channels can be removed from the authorized list should their programming not be consistent with the standards to which Canadian services are held,” said Ian Scott, who was then the chairperson of the regulator.
If that is the standard the CRTC uses, it would ban Fox. No Canadian broadcaster could get away with running a rant like the one Carlson did. The CRTC routinely acts with a heavier hand than the FCC, which has been restrained ever since 1985, when Ronald Reagan repealed the fairness doctrine. In June 2022, for example, CRTC ordered Radio-Canada, the French language branch of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, to apologize for even mentioning the N-word in a radio broadcast about a book important to Quebec nationalists.
Earlier this month, the CRTC agreed to consider Egale’s complaint. It opened a public consultation process that has so far collected 6,500 submissions from both people who want Fox banned to prevent it from spreading hate and Fox fans who would see a ban as an attack on freedom of expression.
Peter Menzies, the former vice-chair of the CRTC, thinks Fox could get yanked. “I think the CRTC is very predisposed to getting rid of them,” he says.
Menzies says the regulator could just note that Carlson was fired and issue a warning: “The other option would be to take a look at it and say, ‘Yeah, we find they did something wrong here,’ and just write a nasty letter, and say ‘please don't do it again.’”
But Menzies, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, is worried about the prospect of a ban because the Liberal government recently passed Bill C-11, extending CRTC’s authority to the internet, drawing streaming services under the authority of the broadcast regulator for the first time.
Conservatives warned that this would lead to censorship, while the Liberals insisted it was about ensuring that big streamers like Netflix follow Canadian content rules that apply to other broadcasters. Menzies fears the critics might be right.
And he would like to know why the CRTC has been swift to act on Fox but seems to be dragging its feet dealing with China Central Television Channel 4, or CCTV-4, a Chinese state broadcaster that CRTC approved in Canada in 2004. The CRTC has yet to rule on a complaint from Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human rights activist who was arrested by Chinese officials in 2016. The authorities broadcast Dahlin’s forced confession on CCTV-4, a tool the government in Beijing routinely uses to humiliate activists.
If the CRTC bans Fox News for spreading hate, shouldn’t it also ban CCTV-4 for airing forced confessions? Neither ban would do what the CRTC intended in 1987 when it enacted the Television Broadcasting Regulations: stop Canadians from consuming the content in question. All the content is available on the web, which did not exist in 1987.
Until the Liberals passed C-11, the CRTC based its authority on its stewardship of a public resource — the airwaves — but in the modern internet era, consumers can watch whatever they like from anywhere in the world.
Fox News is not included in basic cable packages in Canada and doesn’t appear to be widely viewed. Canadian TV ratings aren’t public in the way that Neilsen ratings are in the United States, so it’s hard to be sure, but it does not even register in Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism digital news report on Canada.
But that doesn’t mean nobody is watching. Many Canadian Fox fans are getting their fix online. Research shows that Fox reports on the “Freedom convoy” helped energize protesters last year, because the content was spread through social media platforms, where content is unregulated.
Banning Fox would enrage its Canadian fans — further enflaming a group that is already incandescent with rage against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — but it likely wouldn’t do much to stop people watching.
Carlson, after all, is moving his show to Twitter, beyond the reach of the CRTC. Growing numbers of Canadians are cutting the cord, and getting their video online. Canada can send a signal about Canadian values by banning Fox, but it can’t stop anyone from watching.
Tucker Carlson chats with people backstage before speaking during the FAMiLY Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa.
Tucker, the Twitter phoenix
Just a week ago, Tucker Carlson was in the wilderness after being fired from Fox News. This week, in a move that could upend the media and social media landscapes ahead of 2024, America’s most popular TV news host announced that he is bringing his show to Twitter.
In a video post on Tuesday, Tucker said he will launch a news show on Twitter, a first for the social media platform. Carlson, whom Fox ousted unexpectedly in the wake of its $790 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, said that because “there aren’t many platforms left that allow free speech, the only one is Twitter.”
By any measure, this is a big catch for Elon Musk. Carlson is one of the most influential voices in the growing populist movement within the Republican Party and the single most-watched nighttime TV host, with a regular nightly audience averaging about 3.5 million people.
What might this mean for Twitter? Musk wants Carlson to be the first megastar of his Twitter 2.0 — and to showcase the money and influence his subscription revenue-sharing model could offer content creators. For Twitter, giving Carlson a show marks a transition towards more traditional TV-style broadcasting that could completely transform the platform.
Making this work is crucial for Musk, whose erratic management and drastic changes have put a dent in Twitter’s ad revenue since he took over last year. On Thursday, Musk announced that he had hired a new CEO; he's reportedly in talks with NBCUniversal’s Linda Yaccarino for the role.
Carlson, of course, has his own history of alienating advertisers at Fox. But Musk is betting that Carlson is the key to getting a new subscription revenue model off the ground, and he’s willing to take more risks with his ad revenue to get there. While the specifics haven’t been announced, under Twitter Blue’s new model followers will pay a low fee to subscribe and gain access to Carlson’s content.
But … will Carlson’s audience follow him? It’s unclear how many of his regular viewers are already on Twitter, or how many will meet him there. Carlson’s cable audience was engaged and receptive to his narrative, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into tweets. Carlson is popular with boomers, who do not make up a large portion of Twitter users. What’s more, the experience of scrolling through Twitter is very different from planting yourself in front of the TV for 30 minutes.
Another big question: Call the lawyers!
There are a few legal wildcards. For one thing, Carlson is still trying to get out of his Fox News contract, which continues to pay him $20 million a year but also includes strict non-compete clauses.
But there is a bigger legal issue looming for Musk if he really wants to transform Twitter into a social media broadcaster. Twitter could be subject to FCC fairness rules, which require that it gives voice to both political parties' views on controversial issues — especially if Carlson lands any right-wing 2024 presidential candidates as guests. Musk seems to be trying to get out ahead of this by saying that he is open to liberal content creators, too. On Wednesday, he invited the freshly fired CNN host Don Lemon to join Twitter’s ranks.
Carrying content like Carlson’s could also end up weakening Twitter’s claim to Section 230 protections, internet laws from the 1990s that shield social media platforms from legal liability for content posted on their sites. (Dominion, for example, could not sue Twitter for libel in the same way that it did Fox.)
Musk’s announcement that he is treating Carlson as a “content creator” rather than a news broadcaster may be a feint to avoid liability for Carlson’s content. YouTube, which this future version of Twitter may resemble, is not liable for users’ content. If Twitter was seen as a producer and a publisher of news, however, it might not be able to make the same argument.
What might all of this mean for 2024?
Carlson has a prominent media perch again, and that will matter for the US presidential race. The Fox v. Dominion case unearthed private communications of Carlson bad-mouthing former President Donald Trump, who remains the odds-on favorite to get the GOP nomination (despite, or because of, his outrageous performance on CNN this week.)
On his Fox News show, Carlson was careful not to challenge Trump. It’s unclear whether that was because of the network’s tight leash or because of other strategic calculations he made. But this much is certain: If Carlson on this new Twitter show voices sentiments similar to what he’s texted, we could be in for a showdown between the populist right’s most prominent politician and its most popular media figure.