Tucker “Just Asking Questions” Carlson Wants to Know What Putin Ever Did to You

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has the world bracing for what could be the largest military conflict in Europe since World War II. The Kremlin’s actions, which President Joe Biden on Tuesday called “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” prompted a round of sanctions from Western leaders, while Ukraine preps for a state of emergency to defend itself. Fox News opinion star Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, took a “nothing to see here, folks” approach on Tuesday. Downplaying the spiraling situation as nothing more than a “border dispute,” Carlson suggested Democrats have brainwashed Americans into thinking they have a “patriot duty” to hate Putin and urged viewers to ask themselves whether the more urgent threat to democracy may be closer to home:

“The main thing to know about Ukraine, for our purposes, is that its leader once sent millions of dollars to Joe Biden’s family,” Carlson told viewers, as he chalked the defense the U.S. is mounting of Ukraine up to Biden’s “personal debts to Ukrainian oligarchs.” Later on Tuesday, appearing on Laura Ingraham’s show, Carlson continued to reduce U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine crisis to a “play against fossil fuels,” suggesting the Biden administration is “provoking conflict with the largest gas supplier in Europe” to boost renewable energy. His energy rant came shortly after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz issued an order to halt the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as part of the punishments leveled by the international community on Russia. 

Carlson has used the threat of further Russian invasion of Ukraine not only to attack Biden—as other GOP lawmakers have done—but to reiterate his pro-Russian stance in the style of Donald Trump. In yet another instance of Carlson shoring up the Kremlin’s position, the right-wing cable host on Tuesday claimed Ukraine “is not a democracy,” among a handful of talking points that, Insider notes, echoed Putin’s own earlier this week. 

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