Tucker Carlson has officially started defending Syrian ex-President Bashar Al Assad because of course he has.
During an interview with economist Jeffrey Sachs on Tuesday, Carlson said he didn’t understand why he was supposed to hate Assad, the Syrian dictator who fled to Russia earlier this month after opposition forces overtook Damascus.
“I’m speaking for myself. I don’t have strong feelings about Assad one way or the other,” Carlson said. “Apparently he’s protected the Christians, so I’m grateful for that as a Christian. But, I don’t—why am I required to hate Assad?”
“Tulsi Gabbard went and met with Assad. She’s been attacked ever since. Has anyone ever explained why Americans should hate Assad?” Carlson asked.
“Because every regime change operation we ever do, we have to make sure that the opponent is the worst villain since Hitler or Hitler reincarnate,” Sachs replied, building on his argument that the United States had played a major role in the Syrian regime’s demise earlier this month.
Russian state media outlet RT, which paints the Syrian regime as merely the target of U.S. imperialist forces and not its own engine of mass imprisonment and murder, shared a video of the interview on X.
Carlson, supposedly a journalist, might know that Assad oversaw a brutal 14-year civil war reportedly, sparked in response to peaceful civilian protests, that killed more than 500,000 people, including upward of 164,000 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. If the death toll isn’t enough to turn Carlson’s stomach, perhaps he could read up on the series of the regime’s many torture prisons, used to stamp out rebellion and dissent.
Carlson’s blissful “ignorance” of these facts can be explained by his deferential treatment of the Russian state, which has backed the Assad regime’s military activities for years. Carlson is a known fanboy of the Russian state and its autocratic leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, earning him some fans in Moscow.
Russian state media recently floated the theory that Carlson might act as a back channel between Donald Trump and Putin, after he performed an interview so blatantly sycophantic and weak that even Putin mocked him for it afterward.
As Carlson mentioned, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee to lead national intelligence, has recently come under renewed fire for defending Assad.