The part of the memo that stands out, however, is the Putin government’s urging that state-friendly media feature broadcast clips from Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson “as much as possible.” As quoted by Mother Jones:
“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally.”
It appears Carlson has some high-profile fans in the Kremlin, and that’s hardly a surprise. Carlson, who has continually pushed far-right, white nationalist, autocratic, and fascist themes and guests in front of his conservative viewers has been one of the conservative hosts most reluctant to backtrack from his previous praise for both Putin and Russia’s violence-reliant nationalism. Carlson has even traveled to Europe to highlight authoritarian and protofascist leaders there as examples for U.S. conservatives to follow; while some other Republicans may have voiced past support for Putin’s government largely so as to not fall out of favor with Donald Trump, who has expressed admiration for multiple of the world’s most murderous strongmen, Carlson’s Russia support has been more expressly premised on his show’s own nationalist advocacy.
The Putin government has a new top ally in the United States, and is confident enough to be promoting him to state-aligned media outlets as an “essential” part of its own coverage. The position was once held by Donald Trump, the first president to ever be kicked off social networks for promoting blatantly false conspiracy theories. It is now held by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson—and by each of the Murdoch-backed executives still willing to boost violent authoritarianism and hoax claims, if that is what the extremists of the base want to watch and hear.