CENTRAL VIEW for Monday, February 19, 2024

The Carlson-Putin Interview

Vladimir Putin was trained by the KGB to lie, if convenient, and to kill, if needed. Early on, Putin trained to be an "illegal," an Intel Agent living under cover in the USA. But Putin failed the KGB’s highly demanding English Fluency Exam, ending up as a lowly Case Office in East Germany.**

Amazingly, Putin rose to rule Russia for the last 24 years. Currently, Putin holds the fate of Ukraine in his hands. Even worse, the fate of the world is at the end of Putin’s nuclear index finger.

Tucker Carlson says it took three years of effort to land the Putin interview. He claims our government tried to prevent him from interviewing Putin. But, somehow, Carlson prevailed, recording two hours of Putin fielding questions before a Super Bowl-sized Internet audience. As viewers saw, Putin is not stupid. Putin’s memory for his version of history is prodigious and Putin is so cleverly slippery he makes an Eel seem sticky.

But pulling off the Journalism Scoop of the Decade won’t win Tucker any prizes; instead, plenty of jealous nit-picking by the MSM.

Be aware that television and radio producers regard silence between interviewer and interviewee as the dreaded airtime "dead space." Nevertheless, Carlson employs a police detective interview technique: He asks a logical question and then remains attentively silent.

Eventually, some suspects find themselves compelled to break the uncomfortable silence, sometimes blurting out words that give something away. Putin bit on Carlson’s silence several times.

Be aware Putin answers most questions by indirection, trying to frame his answers in historical terms, yet rarely naming the names of the world leaders whom he faults. Surprisingly, Putin had nice words for Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald J. Trump. Nevertheless, Putin threw President Biden* under the bus by saying he does not know who is currently in charge of the United States.

After about an hour of often boring Russian history, Putin said the CIA and NATO blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline. He said backchannel peace talks are currently taking place; however, he claims former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, went to Kiev to undermine the peace talks that were taking place near Istanbul (March 10-14, 2022), and that Johnson did so at the behest of Biden*. Putin claims peace in Ukraine could have been attained 14 months ago. (PM Johnson did go to Kiev; however, we have no independent confirmation of what PM Johnson said.)

Putin said if the U.S. would stop sending weapons and money to Ukraine, new peace talks could follow in weeks. (Why would the U.S. give up whatever leverage we have before engaging in peace talks?)

When Carlson asked Putin to release imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, Putin took a long time to finally say discussions between Russia and the U.S. were ongoing and that Gershkovich would probably "see his homeland again."

Finally, Putin threw a verbal bomb at the United States. "Why is the U.S. defending faraway Ukraine’s border when the U.S. has so many problems with its own border, and its 33 trillion-dollar national debt? Don’t you have something better to do?" Gulp!

**Putin says Tucker’s CIA job application was rejected. That’s true.

©2024. William Hamilton.

Dr. Hamilton can be contacted at:

Email: william@central-view.com