Thread by @khodorkovsky_en

Upon his departure from Fox, Putin’s international propaganda network RT has “offered” Tucker Carlson a job.

Why do the Kremlin-controlled media love Carlson more than any other Western journalist? Here's the truth: 🧵

One of the Kremlin’s favorite propaganda techniques is to showcase Western media and political figures who say things that agree with its own version of reality, and say “See? There are some sensible Westerners who know the truth”

This is meant to legitimize the regime’s lies in the eyes of the domestic audience, so the higher the stooge’s profile, the better. It’s the reason why Donald Trump became almost the main character of Russian TV during his 2016 campaign, for example

It’s also why in March of 2022, just after Putin started his illegal war in Ukraine, his admin sent a memo out to every major TV channel (most of which are run by Putin’s mistress, Alina Kabaeva) telling them to use more footage of Tucker Carlson

motherjones.com/politics/2022/…

This came after Carlson spent part of his Fox News show defending Putin’s invasion and blaming the US for inciting the conflict. When the order was given, Carlson became a regular star of Russian propaganda in all its forms

And when I say ‘star’, I mean it. Tucker Carlson was everywhere. Here he is splashed across the page of the Russian state broadcaster’s flagship news show, Vesti. The headline: ‘Fox News: Russia Was Right, US Lied’ (about so-called bioweapons labs in Ukraine) vesti.ru/article/2687477

Here he is, accusing Zelensky of planning a nuclear attack on Russia, as quoted by Tsargrad Media Group, owned by wealthy ultranationalist Konstantin Malofeev, sanctioned since 2014 for financing ‘separatists’ in east Ukraine tsargrad.tv/news/zelenskog…

And here regional news agency Ura quotes Carlson as saying that Biden is trying to build a ‘dictatorship’ in the US ‘following Zelensky’s example in Ukraine’ (which wouldn’t sound out of place coming directly from Putin’s mouth) ura.news/news/1052584982

As for TV, Carlson became so popular among Russian channels that one of his rants, in which he blamed “US saboteurs” for the Nord Stream pipeline explosion, was shown at least 12 times in one day across different stations washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…

When he was giving them so much material, of course they were sad to hear he had been fired. Top propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, who regularly calls for Russia to use nuclear weapons against the west, said Tucker was a ‘voice of reason’ – and also offered him a job politico.com/news/2023/04/2…

It doesn’t really matter, whether Carlson is in this willingly or not. At this historic time, this self-declared American patriot has ended up in the same camp as power-mad retired KGB officers and notorious propagandists like Dmitri Kiselyov, who once threatened Russia would turn the US into radioactive ash.

reuters.com/article/ukrain…