For a long time, I have not been a Tucker Carlson fan, even though just about everyone I know, who is right-leaning loves him and believes he’s some sort of noble truth-teller. I have felt he’s mostly a fraud, especially with his embrace of Victor Orban and praising Putin, all by selling this false framing that Orban and Putin are really good Christian leaders fighting evil Western secularism. I started listening to the Tucker Carlson interview of Victor Orban and in the first minute he flipped the narrative.
My impressions of Carlson being disingenuous and a polished liar aren’t going to be popular with hardly any right-wing partisans, who believe he’s some sort of heroic figure trying to take on the lying liberal media. I think he’s as much a fraud as the liberal media liars.
Long ago, there was a big news story in the US, where a young mother claimed her two young sons were kidnapped by a black man, during a carjacking. My mother was talking to me about this case in a phone call and she was so upset about that case. We had both seen the first interview the mother gave to the media and I believed she was lying. I told my mother, I think she’s lying and my mother got very upset with me and asked how I could be that cruel about a mother whose children were kidnapped. Afterwards, when the facts emerged my mother told me that I have always been a good judge of character and I don’t think that’s particularly true. I just watch and listen closely to what people say. Tucker has all sorts of deceptive mannerisms, especially the feigned sincerity and how he carefully sets the stage to get certain responses and lead his guests toward the narrative he wants to sell.
At the 00.32 point in the very beginning of Carlson’s interview of Orban, Carlson lays the trap for gullible Americans and unfortunately too many conservatives in America have swallowed this lie whole. Carlson says, “If you take a step back, the point of NATO is to provoke war with Russia.” This is a total lie. The point of NATO was to prevent the Soviet Union from gobbling up more of Europe at the end of WWII, after the Soviet Union had seized control of the eastern European countries. So, Carlson set-up the rest of this interview with that false premise and too many Americans will buy into that and everything else he sells.
Carlson has flipped the narrative and while I can’t speak to his motives – I can say this is completely untrue and it’s intended to convince Americans to turn on NATO and their own government’s support of Ukraine, a country, which the US agreed to aid with security – to prevent against Russian aggression (just like Russia launching this full-scale invasion last year). This deliberate false-framing is also a tactic that was used for decades by the Soviet Union in their propaganda efforts in the West. Once someone sets up this type of false-framing – beware, because they’re trying to turn you against your own country. It’s very interesting how Carlson also uses this Orban and Putin are really good Christians leaders premise too, when the history of Putin is one of suppression and oppression of any sort of personal liberty in Russia, vast corruption, and a willingness to use extreme measures to destroy any political opponents.
Hungary does have a strong Catholic heritage, but only 12% of them attend church regularly. Spending 45 years under Soviet domination, where religious suppression and atheism was the state policy definitely left a strong mark on Russia and the former Eastern bloc countries. Religious education and activities were restricted in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries.
Victor Orban is very careful not to criticize Putin, because he’s spent the past decade forging close ties with Putin and Hungary relies on Russia:
“Landlocked Hungary gets 80-85% of its gas from Russia, and Szijjarto said that last year about 80% of crude imports also arrived from Russia.
While countries in western Europe have made serious efforts to wean themselves off Russian gas, Hungary has been receiving 4.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year from Russia under a 15-year deal signed in 2021.”
In this interview, both Carlson and Orban keep doing this WWIII fearmongering constantly and that’s an old Soviet propaganda tactic too, to get Western countries to lose their resolve and to convince people that the communist goal is all about seeking “World Peace”. Unfortunately, most Americans have forgotten all of these Cold War lessons. The Soviet Union set up a front organization at the end of WWII called the World Peace Council, to spread anti-West propaganda:
“The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization with the stated goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination. Founded from an initiative of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties, WPC emerged from the bureau’s worldview that divided humanity into Soviet-led “peace-loving” progressive forces and US-led “warmongering” capitalist countries. Throughout the Cold War, WPC operated as a front organization as it was controlled and largely funded by the Soviet Union, and refrained from criticizing or even defended the Soviet Union’s involvement in numerous conflicts.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council
In that quote on the World Peace Council, there’s the framing Carlson has been selling – Russia is peace-loving and it’s NATO and US warmongers, who are the threat to “world peace” – despite the fact Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign country, SIX months after our humiliating Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. In Afghanistan, China immediately moved in to fill the gap and forge close economic and security ties with the Taliban. Here’s a February 6, 2023 Fox news report: China moves in on Afghanistan as relationship with Taliban grows: ‘We welcome Chinese investment’.
Carlson has probably been the single most effective person in American media to cultivate this “oh it’s so dangerous to help Ukraine.” The truth is Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year and yet Carlson consistently portrays Putin as the victim of NATO aggression and the bad Ukrainian government. He often has a retired Army colonel on to spew anti-Ukraine/pro-Russian takes on the situation too.
In this interview Carlson works to get you to doubt NATO and believe it’s provoking war with Russia, despite, again let me repeat the fact that Russia planned and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine – six months after an American retreat in Afghanistan, that both Russia and China are capitalizing on. The other interesting narrative flip going on in anti-Ukraine media messaging lately is an effort to try to peel off American support of Ukraine and get Americans fuming about aid to Ukraine. There’s also an effort to sell this idea that Russia isn’t the threat, China is, and we should be focused on China, not Russia. Then there’s a framing I’ve heard in the past week about how we’re somehow pushing Russia and China closer together by aiding Ukraine. The truth is Russia and China have had close ties since post WWII and Soviet Russia was instrumental in Mao’s communist revolution in China. They were close allies during the Korean War, they were close allies during the Vietnam War too.
All over the world China and Russia are on the move trying to become the world powerbrokers economically and just last week there was this headline from ABC: BRICS announce major expansion with 6 countries joining in 2024. BRICS is an economic group of countries to counter the US-led economies. China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa were the founding countries in BRICS. If the US retreats from aiding Ukraine, that would embolden both Russia and China and weaken America’s position as a world leader. We would be handing Ukraine over to the Russians and abandoning our NATO allies.
Once you allow yourself to buy into Carlson’s false premise, you’re going to keep talking yourself into more and more anti-American, pro-Russia positions and for me, no matter how much I disagree and dislike the policies of the Biden administration – sorry, I’m not going down the road of making excuses for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and then wringing my hands in fear that what the WEST is doing is so dangerous, when it’s what Russia did (A FULL-SCALE INVASION OF A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY) that has brought us to where we are.
President Reagan would be turning over in his grave if he saw what today’s GOP has turned into.
Note: The Trump “peace idea” that Orban supports is America and NATO surrendering to Russian aggression and that isn’t a road to “world peace;” it’s a greenlight to all of America’s adversaries that we no longer have the will to defend our friends or allies. Trump also expressed disdain for NATO and suggested the US pulling out of NATO, which would be a big win for Russia and China.
libertybelle diaries 
Carlson should stick to domestic issues in which actually knows something. As to Orban, his domestic policies are none of our business. The fact that the EU and our state department don’t like him is telling. Frankly it is because he hasn’t kowtowed to gay marriage, homosexual indoctrinations, and trans madness of the decadent west.