Would You Believe Putin Is Tucker Carlson’s De Facto Assignment Editor? Read This Memo, Tell Me I’m Wrong

We thought it odd enough when Donald Trump hired White House staff from the ranks of Fox News, and conversely White House staff left and went to Fox News on a regular basis. But this is next level strangeness. David Corn of Mother Jones obtained a leaked March 3 memo from the Department Of Information and Telecommunications Support which contained directions from Vladimir Putin to “use more Tucker Carlson.”

The March 3 document opens with top-line themes the Kremlin wanted Russian media to spread: The Russian invasion is “preventing the possibility of nuclear strikes on its territory”; Ukraine has a history of nationalism (that presumably threatens Russia); the Russian military operation is proceeding as planned; Putin is protecting all Russians; the “losing” Ukrainian army is shelling residential areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia; foreign mercenaries are arriving in Ukraine; Europe “is facing more and more problems” because of its own sanctions; and there will be “danger and possible legal consequences” for those in Russia who protest the war. The document notes that it is “necessary to continue quoting” Putin. It claims that the “hysteria of the West had reached the inexplicable level” of people calling for killing dogs and cats from Russia and asks, “Today they call for the killing of animals from Russia. Tomorrow, will they call for killing people from Russia?”

Has anybody seen anything about a call to kill “Russian animals?” In all seriousness, I had a magnificent Russian Blue cat named Mischka and I would have defended him with my life. I don’t think this is real.

A section headlined “Victory in Information War” tells Russian journalists to push these specific points: The Ukrainian military is beginning to collapse; the Kyiv government is guilty of “war crimes”; and Moscow is the target of a “massive Western anti-Russian propaganda” operation. It states that Russian media should raise questions about Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s state of mind and suggest he is not truly in charge of Ukraine. And it encourages these outlets to “broadcast messages” highlighting the law recently passed by the Russia Duma that makes it a crime to impede the war effort or disseminate what the government deems “false” information about the war, punishable for up to 15 years in prison. This portion instructs Russian journalists to emphasize that these penalties apply to anyone who promotes news about Ukrainian military victories or Russian attacks on civilian targets.

This is the section of the memo that calls on Russian media to make as much use as possible of Tucker Carlson’s broadcasts. No other Western journalist is referenced in the memo.

Mother Jones is not posting the full document to protect the source of the material. Here are photos of the memo. The first shows the opening page; the next displays the paragraph citing Carlson.

You can hit the link above and see the document, in Russian, citing Carlson. This is sobering in the extreme. We actually have a renowned talk show host in this country who is taking his marching orders directly from the Kremlin? This is beyond black comedy or dystopian fiction. This is just plain surreal.

Here’s everything you wish you never knew about the latest bioweapons conspiracy theory, echoing the equally mythical Chinese bioweapons labs in Wuhan conspiracy theory.

On Wednesday, Carlson claimed that the “Russian disinformation they’ve been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.” He was referring to the Russian allegation that the United States had set up biowarfare labs in Ukraine. But this charge was far from proven. At a congressional hearing, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland had testified that Ukraine possessed biological research facilities and that the US government was worried about “research materials” falling into the hands of Russian forces. This was a far cry from substantiating the Russian charge that Washington was working on bioweapons in Ukraine. But Putin’s regime jumped on the Nuland testimony and cited it as proof of nefarious American activity. Carlson echoed this Russian propaganda.

You see how facts get distorted. And Tucker Carlson is right there to scoop them up and put the distortion on the airwaves.

A March 10 “recommendations for coverage” memo from the same Russian agency highlights this bioweapons allegation as a top talking point for Russian media, noting the message should be that the “activities of military biological laboratories with American participation on the territory of Ukraine carried global threats to Russia and Europe.” The document goes further, encouraging its recipients to allege that the “the United States is working on a ‘biogenocide of the Eastern Slavs.’”

The memo lays out the details of this bizarre conspiracy theory: The United States was conducting “experiments with genetic material collected on the territory of Ukraine,” with the “main objective” being “to create unique strains of various kinds of viruses for targeted destruction of the population in Russia.” The United States even had a plan to transmit pathogens “by wild birds migrating between Ukraine, Russia and other neighboring countries.” This scheme included “studying the possibility of carrying African swine fever and anthrax.” The memo claims “biolaboratories set up and funded in Ukraine have been experimenting with bat coronavirus samples.” It cites Nuland’s testimony and says the United States was involved with “military biological laboratories” in Ukraine that “potentially posed a global threat to all of Europe.”

Carlson had amplified a slice of this Russian propaganda.

If Tucker Carlson isn’t an enemy of the state, I don’t know what would make him one. This is astounding. Read the entire Mother Jones piece in full. It’s lengthy and filled with facts you’ll want to know. And neither Fox News nor Carson responded to Mother Jones’ request for a comment.

It beats the hell out of me how the First Amendment can be used to protect an anti-American line of commentary during a time of war. I really and truly am having a hard time grasping this. In the 1950’s Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt negatively impacted the lives of many Hollywood screenwriters, some of whom went to jail for un-American activities — specifically they were accused of un-American activities and then went to jail for contempt of Congress because they refused to spread the witch hunt any further. Nothing that any of those people wrote or did came anywhere near this.

The Hollywood Ten were accused of communist influence and subversion. Nowadays we have a memo directly from the Kremlin documenting Russian influence and subversion from the President of Russia and you don’t see Congress making a peep.

What is going on? How did America get this far off track? And the insidiousness of it is, Fox News has already normalized all this and they will continue to normalize it. Nikita Khrushchev was right: he said they would take over without firing a shot and it looks like that in fact will be the case.