‘Mm, uh huh, yeah’: Tucker Carlson and journalism’s therapeutic turn

Could the subject of the Sudetenland have been resolved more satisfactorily if Adolf Hitler had been given a more open platform? Somewhere he could really air his views? No messing, no clipping. Four hours on Joe Rogan, perhaps?        

It’s a historical what-if stirred up again this week by Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The rangy two-hour session at the Kremlin, trailed for days, became available on Tucker’s website yesterday. It makes for uneven listening. Early expectations were of a blockbuster that could have become the most-viewed video in the history of Twitter/X. They have been wide of the mark.  

For all his newsmaker status, the President begins with a 20-minute discursion into the origins of the Russian state that takes us back as far as 862 and the Kievan Rus. Its chief amusement is in witnessing the panic spread across Carlson’s face, five minutes in, as he realises that Putin has still only progressed as far as 978 and Volodymyr The Great.