Fox News aired two very different segments about the Russian threat to Ukraine on Tuesday.
SO WHAT
The divide between the GOP establishment and the “New Right” is have a prime-time moment.
WHAT TUCKER SAID
As tensions flared anew in the Eastern bloc, Carlson said this wasn’t American’s fight.
Key points:
- The “New Right”-leaning Federalist declared that Tucker was standing up against the “neocon push” for war
- “There is nothing we could possibly gain from a military confrontation with Vladimir Putin and there is very much we could lose… but that doesn’t mean Joe Biden won’t do it,” Carlson said.
- “Biden is unpopular,” Carlson continued. “He is incompetent and he is desperate, but more than anything Joe Biden is weak. [Biden] is a pawn of his staff and the hard-eyed ideologues who surround him.”
Carlson was also joined by fellow primetime host Laura Ingraham:
WHAT WICKER SAID
But Carlson and company were countered by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, a stalwart of the GOP establishment.
Key points:
- “I hope that maybe there was no finger waving,” in the conversation between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Wicker said. “I hope there was a show resolve.”
- Wicker continued that U.S. “Military action could mean that we stand off with our ships in the Black Sea and we rain destruction on Russian military capability. It could mean that.”
- “It could mean we participate,” Wicker said. “It could mean American troops on the ground.”
Wicker was joined in spirit by Mitch McConnell, the power Senate Minority leader:
THE REACTION
Foreign policy traditionalists on all stripes bashed Carlson and friends, suggesting they were basically pro-Putin, and insinuating and outright treason and anti-Americanism.
Meanwhile, populists and reformers took their turn bashing Wicker:
And some right-leaning populists suggested Biden and co. care more about Russia than China, and it shows:
DEJA VU?
Carlson’s point about Biden’s aides is salutary: “now among the many, many ironies here is that the Ukraine crisis was largely created by Joe Biden’s own aides and many people like them throughout all levels of the U.S. government.”
… The Democratic hype around Russia is a recrudescence of the Russia panic and bad blood between senior Democratic aides and the Kremlin that gave rise to the now-debunked “Russiagate” scare:
