Journalist accuses US government of blocking Putin interview

In his debut episode of the show "Tucker" on Rossiya24, the pro-Russian presenter, Tucker Carlson, launched a scathing critique of the United States for its assistance to Ukraine. He also targeted Volodymyr Zelensky and fully justified Russia's invasion in this first episode for the Russian television network.

Rossiya24 is Russia's leading news channel, and its talk show hosts primarily aim to convince their audience that Kyiv is responsible for the war that has been raging for many months.

Last week, Carlson claimed without evidence that "the U.S. government" prevented him from interviewing Putin. "I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, and the U.S. government stopped me," he said in an interview published by the Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche on Thursday.

Carlson recently started a new show twice a week on Twitter. The first episode, on June 6, garnered nearly 120 million views.

It is worth noting that the conservative TV network Fox News and Carlson agreed to part ways in April, shortly after Fox Corp settled with the electronic voting machine company Dominion.

His show, "Tucker Carlson Tonight," averaged 3.3 million viewers in 2022, making it the most popular evening show on American cable television.

[With information sourced from The Washington Post]