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Tucker Carlson hijacked first GOP candidates' forum to push his anti-Ukraine, pro-Putin agenda [1]

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Date: 2023-07-18  

Tucker Carlson hijacked the first major candidates’ forum of the 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign to push his anti-Ukraine, pro-Putin agenda

The annual Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Iowa, last Friday was expected to be a showcase for candidates to espouse their views on issues like abortion bans and denying transgender rights. But instead Carlson got a chance to demonstrate just why he’s the Kremlin’s favorite U.S. pundit.

In fact, in early March 2022, just a week after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Putin regime put out a memo urging state-run media to use as many clips of Carlson as possible.

And immediately after his ouster from Fox News in April, he received several job offers from Kremlin-run broadcasters. So Carlson as a Plan B if his new show on Twitter fails or is forced to halt by a potential Fox News lawsuit.

The international TV network RT—formerly Russia Today—tweeted at Carlson: “You can always question more with RT.” Top Putin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov shared a screenshot of an email he sent to Carlson, offering him a job, saying “You don't have to be afraid of taking the piss out of Biden here.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in unprompted remarks at a press conference at U.N. headquarters in late April, hypocritically lamented Carlson’s departure from Fox News as an example of the deterioration of freedom of speech in the U.S.

"I heard that Tucker Carlson has left Fox News. It's curious news. What is this related to? I can only guess," Lavrov said. "But clearly, the wealth of views in the American information space has suffered as a result."

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So you would have thought that the influential Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats would have taken taken this into consideration when he chose Carlson to interview GOP presidential candidates at the Family Leadership Summit. Evangelicals are a key Republican voting bloc in Iowa, whose caucuses remain the first state nominating contest on the GOP presidential primary calendar. Among the GOP presidential hopefuls interviewed by Carlson were Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Twice indicted former President Donald Trump, who remains the GOP front-runner, cited a scheduling conflict and did not attend. The New York Times wrote that Vander Plaats found out “what happens when you turn over your Republican presidential showcase to Tucker Carlson”:

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/18/2181745/-Tucker-Carlson-hijacked-first-GOP-candidates-forum-to-push-his-anti-Ukraine-pro-Putin-agenda

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