“The Vorlons say, understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth” - John Sheridan, Babylon 5

By Tom Luongo - February 13, 2024

The biggest media story of 2024 so far has come and gone. Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin last week.

Everyone, even the Davos/UK dominated media, has put forth their opinion on it. I gave out a quick take for my Patrons the morning after just like everyone else. And like everyone else I missed the biggest takeaway from this interview.

Now, if you go through the commentary what you will mostly see is people, as always, doing what traders call “talking their book.” In other words, as opposed to dealing with the information presented and the motivations of the people involved, most media outlets and commentators put forth their opinion on whether this interview satisfied their needs from it.

So, for the hardcore geopolitical types and armchair psychoanalysts, we heard a lot of opinions second-guessing Putin’s strategy to open the interview with a nearly thirty minute recitation of Russian/Ukrainian history. Why would he do this, was the common refrain.

I’ll use my former-bellwether-for-normies, Scott Adams, as an example of this.

How many of you thought Putin was "all there" in the Tucker interview?

If he seemed lucid to you, it's because Biden is your comparison.

I thought Putin seemed unhinged. The history lesson was not a good sign. https://t.co/VZiEIHRZ2t

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 9, 2024

This was the kindest of the ‘bad takes’ I found on this. But I’m having one of Scott’s “One movie, two screens,” moments here. Because Putin looked anything other than “unhinged.” In fact, he looked as calm as I’ve ever seen him, taking a relaxed posture to put Carlson, who was clearly unsure of where he stood at the beginning of the interview, at ease.

But this is the message that Adams wanted to see, framing Putin in relation to Biden, because he needed something unique to say to justify his even being in the conversation.

By contrast, Martin Armstrong had a great post curating all of the crazy Neocon takes from the “media” on his blog over the weekend.

What’s obvious from those is that they understood that Putin’s 30 minute opening monologue would put off a lot of casual watchers who would tune him out at that point. So, their “analysis” focused on steering the conversation to Putin’s ‘false history’ of Russia and Ukraine.

This way that ‘false history’ would dominate everyone’s opinions the next day, managing the Overton Window of the entire interview, making it all about that. This would be the basis of how they discredit Putin.

Then to discredit Carlson, people like Hillary Clinton was trotted out to lie about Tucker Carlson, calling him a “useful idiot,” and “puppy dog” and a joke in Russian media, which is an outright lie. Hillary’s harpy laugh made an appearance alongside a sycophant interviewer as they joked about Carlson’s having been fired from every legitimate news agency.

We were treated to a common sight: Two Beltway insiders laughing inside their echo chamber and only our sick fascination with roadkill makes it even remotely interesting.

So, the whole exercise is reframed as Puppy Dog Tucker throwing softballs to Liar Putin to distract us away from the sum and substance of their talk.

I know… in other news water is wet and women want more sex when they’re fertile.

And I also know that it is fatuous to bring up these panicked attempts to marginalize this event. They started days before Carlson was even rumored to be in Moscow.

On the one hand we have people intentionally missing the point because they need to have their opinions validated. And on the other we have people intentionally leading those truly curious away from the purpose of the interview: to get an unfiltered look at Putin’s motivations for how he governs Russia.

Why? Because, as we already also know, the warmongers are in charge in the West and they will not be deterred by some prep school gadfly and a dirty Slavic ruler with pretensions of adequacy.

So the war show must go on.

But buried beneath these layers of surreality are these men’s motivations for having this talk. Carlson’s motivation is illuminated quite effectively in his first appearance after his talk with Putin (watch the first 90 seconds).

His outrage at being denied this interview for three years by NSA/CIA spying on him is what drove him. The worst thing the gatekeepers ever did was fire Tucker Carlson from Fox News; making him independent freed him from the restraints of the corporate media.

Knowing that Tucker tried for three years to get this interview with Putin, we should assume that Putin would come into the room prepared. So, it makes sense that Putin wanted to give us a history lesson because he assumes, rightly, that most Americans do not have any clue about Russia’s history.

He didn’t do this to bore us, he did this to inform us and set us at ease. To tell us that he is a man with a perspective that he believes he can justify. He’s not a frothing-at-the-mouth cannibal who desires world domination.

No, Putin’s aim was to elucidate, calmly, the nature of the conflict, laying out the missteps made along the way. And I believe he was effective to those that stayed with him. Because, never once did Putin talk down to his audience.

How many Americans learned that . . .

[SNIP]