Putin interview with Tucker Carlson shows Kremlin outreach to Trump’s GOP

MOSCOW — As Russian state television propagandists salivated over Tucker Carlson’s interview with President Vladimir Putin, the first of Carlson’s falsehoods about his visit to Moscow was punctured, fittingly enough, by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who presumably helped arrange the whole strange venture.

Carlson, the conservative former Fox News host with a history of airing bogus “news,” claimed — falsely — that prominent U.S. newspapers and television outlets had refused to interview Putin since his invasion of Ukraine and were ignoring Russia’s perspective. Carlson labeled Western media as “corrupt” and accused them of lies on Tuesday in a video confirming that he was in Moscow for a Q&A with the president.