He can be sure that Vladimir Putin can count on the experts at Fox News.
At first, the American broadcaster downplayed the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine as a "diversionary tactic" and ridiculed Volodymyr Zelenskyy's "pathetic" appeal for peace.
Then Fox News contrasted the “weak” American President Joe Biden with a supposedly strong and clever Vladimir Putin.
Now Tucker Carlson, the station's driving force, who attracts attention with tirades about the supposed "suppression" of white Americans by Latinos and Afro-Americans or the "censorship" of Trump supporters by left-wing elites, has become the Kremlin's mascot - excerpts from Carlson's show are now available can be seen regularly on the Russian state broadcaster RT.
It's a new low for Fox News, which has long served as Donald Trump's mouthpiece and cue-giver, and still only half-heartedly distances itself from his "stolen election" tale.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov specifically hailed Fox News as the only channel that "presents an alternative view" in a Western landscape of "manipulated media" and "censorship".
The Kremlin urges the pro-state media to quote Tucker Carlson: "It is imperative to use as many fragments as possible from the broadcasts of popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson," says a report published by Mother Jones magazine. published memo from the Kremlin to the Russian media.
The fact that the broadcaster, which mourned the violent death of its cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and the producer Oleksandra Kuvshynova, 24, in a firefight in Ukraine, is silent and allows Carlson to do his thing, is stunned.
According to Mother Jones, the memo, titled "For Media and Commentators," comes from Russia's "Ministry of Information and Telecommunications";
the recommendation for Carlson, along with a quote from him ("How would the United States act if such a situation developed in neighboring Canada or Mexico?") is found in a section of the memo punishing "misinformation" about the Russian attack with a prison sentence of up to fifteen years.
Carlson has done little to endear himself to Vladimir Putin.
Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he had said on his show that one should ask oneself why one should actually hate Putin: "Did Putin ever call me a racist?
Has he outsourced every middle class job in my city to Russia?
Did he fabricate a global pandemic that destroyed my company?” The Russian state broadcaster RT didn't take long to take over this monologue – it broadcast it verbatim with Russian subtitles.
Carlson's claim that Ukraine is “not a democracy at all, but a State Department client state” will also find applause in Putin's propaganda apparatus.
"Has Putin ever threatened to fire me for disagreeing?"
A gift for Moscow
Carlson has had great success challenging the “mainstream” opinion that the Biden administration is said to be dictating to the public.
He hardly knows any limits to his show – except for his own ratings.
When the Americans sided with Ukraine by a large majority after the Russian attack, Carlson switched to claiming that the Americans and NATO had deliberately challenged Putin's invasion by supporting Ukraine's desire to join NATO.
In the direction of his colleague Jennifer Griffin, who as a longtime security expert and Fox News correspondent has repeatedly corrected the false statements of her colleagues and their interviewees, he says that some reporters are apparently agents of the Pentagon.
Carlson is "a boundless gift" for Moscow, wrote the Los Angeles Times, after he described the sanctions against Russian oligarchs as "unfair" and the story of American bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine, popular among conspiracy theorists on the political right, as alleged "The Russian disinformation that we've been told for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory is, in fact, absolutely and completely true," Carlson said of State Department official Victoria Nuland's statement that there were research facilities in the Ukraine, which the Americans didn't want to see in Russian hands.
The details – these bodies, also known as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), are no secret,
Carlson should be "fired for his shameful performance," the Los Angeles Times said.
Of course, that's unlikely to happen.
"Instead," the paper wrote, "we are left with mourning for the real journalists who tried to inform Americans rather than deceive them."