Tucker Carlson is the host of a very popular political program on Fox News, the American conservative channel. And among his fans he also apparently counts the Kremlin. A little over a week after the invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities sent a note to state television which leaked to an American magazine mother jones. It is “essential”, it said, “to use as many excerpts as possible from the program” by Carlson “which harshly criticizes the actions of the United States and NATO”. Before the start of the war, this ardent Trumpist with a baby face had never ceased to sing the praises of the Russian president.
“Since Donald Trump came to power, Washington Democrats have told you it’s your patriotic duty to hate Vladimir Putin,” but “why did you have to hate Putin?” he asked his millions of viewers. , adding that Ukraine was “not a democracy” but a puppet of the State Department”.
Blessed bread for the Russian media, which regularly broadcast clips of Carlson’s show. So much so that on Twitter, the host is called “Tuckyo Rose”, a pun on Tokyo Rose, the nickname given during the Second World War to women who spoke for Japanese propaganda on the radio. And he’s not the only American to make headlines on Russian TV news. The channels also often repeat the statements of Tulsi Gabbard, a very controversial former Democrat, who denounces the sanctions and accuses the United States and NATO of having provoked Russia.
Republican contortions
But since the invasion, the Trumpists, supporters of “America first”, find themselves brutally marginalized. This is due to the staggering volte-face of the Republican Party. No more isolationism, flirtations with friend Putin, contempt for NATO… They have returned to the pre-Trump era, to a hawkish, anti-autocrat and anti-Russian party and even go so far as to denigrate President Joe Biden, not enough warmonger for their taste.
Even more unprecedented, some Republicans are fighting back and no longer hesitate to attack the Trumpists, something unthinkable not long ago. Pat McCrory, Senate candidate in North Carolina, launched a murderous ad against his opponent Ted Budd, dubbed by Donald Trump, accusing him of being friends with Putin and of having voted against sanctions against Russia.
This forces the populist wing to “indulge in contortions to reconcile its past positions with recent events”, notes William Galston, of the Democratic think tank Brookings Institution. Tucker Carlson has thus admitted that Putin was “guilty” of having started the war, but he continues to propagate a conspiracy theory coming from Moscow, according to which the United States funds laboratories in Ukraine which develop biological weapons.
Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri who was ready to play Moscow’s game by preventing the Ukrainians from entering NATO, is now campaigning to arm them. As for Mike Pence, who is preparing for the 2024 election, he is trying to distance himself. In a speech to Republican backers, Trump’s ex-vice president said, “There’s no place in this party for Putin apologists. There’s only room for the champions of freedom”.
Trump “vulnerable for 2024”
Is this the sign of the end of Trump’s hold on the Republican Party? “Most Republicans have continued to adhere to Ronald Reagan’s theses in recent years, even if we heard a lot of the minority isolationist current,” said Chris Stirewalt of the American Enterprise Institute, a moderate right-wing think tank.
Conservative political commentator Charles Sykes is more skeptical in a magazine op-ed Politico. “The tide in favor of Putin-is-a-genius remains modest at this time but, as we have seen time and time again, Trumpist voices are currently part of the Republican Party psyche.”
In any case, “Trump’s attachment to Putin and Russia, his efforts to extort information from the Ukrainian president [sur les Biden, en échange de livraisons d’armes]make it terribly vulnerable for 2024”, continues Chris Stirewalt. “We will have to wait to know the long-term political ramifications of the war in Ukraine but we already know that the biggest loser on the internal level is Trump”.