Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed Tucker Carlson was a “useful idiot” during an interview that aired Wednesday evening on MSNBC.
Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller and Daily Caller News Foundation, announced he had interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin on X Tuesday, prompting some lawmakers in Europe to seek sanctions against the former Fox News host. Clinton and MSNBC host Alex Wagner attacked Carlson for doing the interview in Moscow.
“Tucker Carlson is in Moscow right now, interviewing Vladimir Putin,” Wagner told Clinton. “The first American, I’ll say journalist, to interview Putin since the war in Ukraine began. What does it tell you about Tucker Carlson and right-wing media and also, Vladimir Putin?”
“Well, it shows me what I think we’ve all known: He is what’s called a ‘useful idiot,’” Clinton responded. “I mean, if you actually read translations of what’s being said on Russian media, they make fun of him. He’s like a puppy dog.”
Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. In the wake of Clinton’s defeat, MSNBC hosts and guestsroutinely hyped the claims that Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with the Russian government to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Hosts often brought up a dossier assembled by Christopher Steele, which has since been discredited.
Clinton claimed Carlson may have been looking for a new employer, citing his April 24 departure from Fox News.
“After having been fired from so many outlets in the United States, I would not be surprised if he emerges with a contract with a Russian outlet because he is a useful idiot,” Clinton said. “He says things that are not true. He parrots Valdimir Putin’s pack of lies about Ukraine, so I don’t see why Putin wouldn’t give him an interview.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign against Donald Trump, Clinton famously claimed that one “could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables,’” labeling them as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” before declaring them “irredeemable.”
Harold Hutchison on February 7, 2024
