The Daily Beast Podcast - Is Tucker Carlson Pandering to ‘Stupid’ Americans for Russia?

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

Russia would love to see American democracy dissipate, and they desperately want Donald Trump back in office to do it, says Daily Beast columnist Julia Davis, founder of Russian Media Monitor. She explains on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal how Tucker Carlson could already be leading the charge in this effort, explains why Russian media would love to see a U.S. civil war and shares that the Kremlin has no plans to stop its disinformation warfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have Daily Beast columnist Julia Davis, and she's going to talk to us about all the mess Russia's making in politics in our world today. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Julia. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, my God. Russian media must be having a field die. Absolutely, they are. They are extremely excited and sensitive. seeing many new opportunities to attack us. Yeah, so explain to our audience what is happening.

Well, what is happening right now is originally when Trump was our president, they saw many opportunities to attack us and they knew he would play on their side, but they saw him being essentially stymied by Congress and Senate. They have expressed a lot of hopes for his second term when he would turn more. authoritarian and they anticipated being able to finally take a full advantage of it and that didn't happen. And after he didn't win, they were convinced he would get prosecuted and even joked about potentially giving him asylum in Russia. And now that they see he is actually not being prosecuted so far, they are acting with renewed hopes that he will be returning to the office in 2024.

and also they're hoping Republicans will prevail in 2022. And they are reinvigorated because Trump himself made it very clear that he would essentially look the other way while Putin takes Ukraine back. It sounded to me like when Trump said that to Hannity that we would not fight for Ukraine, it's not in our interest, let them fight for themselves. It seemed to me like that was message straight to Putin. If you help me get reelected, you can have Ukraine. Right. No question. I watched some clips from a Tucker Carlson episode where he was very mad at NATO and said that the only reason NATO exists is to give poor Vladimir Putin a hard time.

How does right-wing media come up with things that sound like RT talking points? That's what's so fascinating about it. I'm sure you've heard earlier some time ago when it came out that Tucker has been trying to secure an interview with Putin and has been talking to Kremlin intermediaries. And so it makes me wonder, who was he talking to and who is he still talking to? Because the messages he's delivering are right on point with what they want uneducated Americans to believe. If you listen to the Russian media, like one of the prevailing themes is how stupid and uneducated Americans are and how ignorant about the world. So they have quite an instrument of influence if Tucker can convince the so-called, quote-unquote, conservative base that counteracting Putin is not

in our best interests and NATO is of no use because it serves Putin very well. And Tucker, basically almost every popular show that I watch on Russian state media includes clips of Tucker and they're applauding Tucker and expressing solidarity with him and talk about how much they like him and what a great common sense he has. So it seems to be going both ways here. I don't even understand why this is good for Tucker. Perhaps Tucker sees Trump's another term on horizon and Trump's, Trump certainly wants to cozy up to Russia. He made that clear. Probably Tucker is trying to ensure that Russia helps with his reelection. And then Tucker will be in a very cozy place, being the

mouthpiece of an authoritarian leader. And that's what the Russians have been predicting all along, that if Trump gets back in, democracy is over and the United States will become an authoritarian regime and will be ruled by generations of Trump's. Oh, that's terrible. That's really the worst thing I've ever. I was a little depressed, but now I'm even more depressed. What constitutes Russian media? Well, for the most part, it's Kremlin funded, Kremlin controlled news outlets. And all other outlets are either suppressed or closed down and they don't have much resonance. So for the most part, Imagine if we only had Fox News. That's basically what they have.

And then some tiny little fledgling independent outlets that are being put through very difficult scenarios to silence them. They certainly are not on Russian television. They are broadcasting on the Internet or on the radio. And they're being oppressed and silenced. It's so bad. It really is. Do you see anything else on Russian state media that we should be watching for? They're trying to cozy up to Trump's base.

And the way they're doing it is they're watching us very meticulously. For example, whatever I see on American television, I will see the very next day or sometimes the same day discussed on the Russian television we're one of their main projects. They're literally watching us as one of their pet projects. So when I watch Russian state television, the first half of the program will be about the United States and how to undermine them.

And the second half will be about Ukraine and how to undermine it. And so those are their two top priorities right now. They watch what the conservatives, and I use that term, not in the true sense of conservatives, but Trump conservatives, they're watching to see what triggers them and they try to come up with messaging that will make them think that Russia is the only country in the world

that understands them, that Russia is the only place in the world where the white people are a priority and would be protected, where they oppose anything but the so-called traditional sexual orientation. So they're trying to come up with the messaging that would turn Americans towards Russia in that sense and convince them that Russia is really not the enemy and that they're ideologically close to us.

And you could see how that worked some of those ridiculous characters and T-shirts that say they'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat. And they were showing that off proudly on Russian state television because it was one of the examples of their messaging working. They're hoping the Republicans will win in 2022. And so their only stumbling block is that the Republicans, for the most part, are still determined to help Ukraine. And here's where the characters like Tucker come in in convincing Republicans that that course has to be changed and Russia has to be given free reign and who really cares about Ukraine. And Tucker has been pretty persistent on that. I've heard on many shows now. He's saying, why are we not on Russia's side? They're much more important to us. Why do we care about Ukraine? It's been a consistent message. And it's quite disturbing and unfortunately, very effective. Do you see any way out here? I think just exposing what's going on and hopefully awakening some people to what really is going on.

And if you watch our media, unfortunately, they don't cover as much about Russia as they probably should. And they maybe don't explain that Russia is aiming not only to control its neighbors, but they're expanding throughout the world. Africa, Middle East, Putin wants to be the world's greatest superpower. and he is hoping to force the United States out. And Trump's idea resonated with the Kremlin very much, where he said the United States is just going to mind its own business and not be the world's policeman. And guess what?

Then Putin will step in, and he will not be trying to install democracies. He will just be robbing, raping, and pillaging, establishing dominance all over the world. he has great ambitions and it goes far beyond just Ukraine. Oh, it's so scary. So it didn't mean to depress you. No, but it's so funny because Russia has this tiny, tiny economy,

but they have a very outsized influence on international politics. Exactly. And they pride themselves at that. And, you know, if you, they fully acknowledge that economically, there's nothing they could do to us, but they constantly say that as far as information warfare goes, they are winning and they're pretty proud of it. And they certainly have no plans to stop. I hope that there is some accountability that's forthcoming for Trump and other high-level people that are involved, because if not, the next elections will be a bloody mess, literally and figuratively.

It seems like Russia would also be very happy with the civil war. Absolutely. They have been promoting the idea of race war and civil war in the United States for decades. And now that they're seeing it sort of taking hold, they definitely want that. And they're hoping that the United States will disintegrate and different states will fall away. And some of the founders of those movements, like, for example, the Calais, exit guy ended up living in Russia. And there's very direct links to that. So whatever weakens the United States makes it unable or unwilling to take part in international politics and

stand in Putin's way. They are certainly for it and they're supporting it in any way possible. Oh, that's fun. Thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Molly. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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