Russian President Vladimir Putin has mercilessly trolled Tucker Carlson, making clear he was unimpressed with the interviewer’s softball questions during their recent sitdown in Moscow.
“To be honest, I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions,” Putin, 71, said in an interview in his homeland Wednesday when asked about Carlson.
“I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way,” he claimed of his expectations for a feisty exchange.
“Frankly, I did not get full satisfaction from this interview.”
Putin agreed with critics who mocked Carlson, 54, for effectively allowing the warmongering leader to lecture him on the history of Russia and Ukraine rather than challenging him during Putin’s first interview with a US journalist in the two years since he declared war.
Putin told pro-Kremlin Russian TV interviewer Pavel Zarubin that he was taken aback that Carlson had made only a few attempts to interject.
“Surprisingly for a Western journalist, he turned out to be patient, listened to my lengthy [monologues], especially those related to history. He did not give me a reason to do what I had been prepared to do,” Putin said of his hopes for an aggressive debate.
Putin said that Carlson had a “plan” going into the interview and carried it through.
“But to what degree it was meaningful at the end of the day, I cannot say,” he added.
The Kremlin said Putin had agreed to be interviewed by Carlson because his approach differed from the “one-sided” reporting of the Ukraine conflict by many Western news outlets.
