Tucker Carlson faces new backlash over Putin interview after Navalny death

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is facing a fresh wave of criticism over his controversial interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week – and his subsequent comments that “every leader kills people” – following the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Friday.

Navalny died suddenly in an Arctic Russian prison colony Friday, collapsing after he felt “unwell” after taking a walk, Russia’s prison service said. Russian opposition figures, and some global leaders, called it a state-sponsored murder.

On Feb. 8, just over a week before Navalny’s death, Carlson made global headlines when he aired a two-hour interview with Putin. He framed it as a media coup – even as critics noted that Putin dominated the interview, offering rambling accounts of Russian history while Carlson spent most of the time in silence.

Then on Monday, Carlson was questioned at the World Government Summit in Dubai, asked by Egyptian journalist Emad Eldin Adeeb why he did not challenge Putin on Navalny, freedom of speech in Russia, or restrictions on the opposition ahead of upcoming elections.

Carlson responded: “I didn’t talk about the things that every other American media outlet talks about,” adding: “I have spent my life talking to people who run countries, in various countries, and have concluded the following: That every leader kills people, including my leader. Every leader kills people, some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people, sorry, that’s why I wouldn’t want to be a leader.”

The comments appeared to come back to haunt him Friday, after Navalny’s death was announced.

Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), accused Carlson of having “made a bunch of Russian propaganda in Moscow. Then he said publicly ‘leaders kill people’ and then Putin murdered Navalny – his most famous and powerful dissident. Americans should not forget this,” she tweeted.

President Biden’s granddaughter Naomi Biden also tweeted a recent video of Carlson promoting life in Russia while visiting a grocery store. “Has anything ever aged so poorly, so quickly before?” she wrote on Friday morning. “If Russia is so great, Tucker Carlson should move there and run for president.”

Former Wyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney called Carlson “Putin’s useful idiot,” as she shared a story about Navalny’s death.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who had previously also called Tucker one of Russia’s “useful idiots,” wrote after Navalny’s death: “History will not be kind to those in America who make apologies for Putin and praise Russian autocracy.”

Carlson did not respond to a Friday afternoon request for comment from the Washington Post. In a statement to the Daily Mail newspaper Friday, however, he said it was “horrifying what happened to Navalny. The whole thing is barbaric and awful. No decent person would defend it.”

He added that his comments at the summit “had zero to do with Navalny. I wasn’t referring to him, which is obvious in context, and I certainly wasn’t making excuses for killing people. I’m totally opposed to killing, as I said.”

The Kremlin said last week that it routinely blocks media interview requests from large Western outlets but that Carlson’s request was approved because “his position is different.”

The move has been interpreted as a sign of Putin’s interest in reaching Republican supporters of former president Donald Trump, many of whom have expressed admiration for the Russian leader and questioned U.S. support of Ukraine, even as other Republicans have sought to call out Putin apologists in the party.

Surprisingly – or perhaps unsurprisingly – Putin was among the critics of the Carlson interview, saying this week that he had been disappointed by a lack of “sharp questions,” without acknowledging that he had dominated the interview and admonished Carlson when he interrupted.

“Frankly, I did not get full satisfaction from this interview,” Putin said.

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Robyn Dixon, Natalia Abbakumova and Francesca Ebel contributed to this report.