The popular US anchor has been “strongly” asking for a meeting with the Russian leader, Margarita Simonyan said
Tucker Carlson speaks at the Turning Point Action conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 15, 2023. © Joe Raedle / Getty Images / AFP
Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson has been seeking an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said on Sunday.
“[Carlson] is strongly requesting an interview with Vladimir Putin,” Simonyan said on a talk show aired by Rossiya-1 TV channel. “It would be great, if someone listens and notifies the president about this.”
Carlson has not commented on the matter. Putin rarely gives one-on-one interviews to foreign media. His last lengthy conversation with a Western journalist was an interview with CNBC anchor Hadley Gamble on the sidelines of the Russian Energy Week forum in Moscow in October 2021.
‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’, which aired on Fox from 2016 and 2023, was the highest-rated show on US cable news. Carlson was abruptly fired from the channel in April. According to the journalist, the termination was one of the conditions of the settlement Fox News reached with the Dominion Voting Systems, which sued the channel for defamation over its coverage of the US 2020 presidential election.
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Carlson has since launched his own show on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and interviewed several 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls, including former president Donald Trump and former vice president Mike Pence. He is known as a vocal critic of Washington’s military and financial aid to Ukraine during its armed conflict with Russia.
