Former Fox News Host Tucker Carlson accused Newsweek of attempting to give the federal government reason to spy on him with a fabricated report of his show airing in Russia. On Tuesday, Newsweek reported Carlson launched a show on Russian state television before walking the claims back hours later.
“Tucker Carlson launches show on Russian state TV,” the original headline read. According to Newsweek, footage of Carlson’s X show aired on Russia 24 and was translated into Russian. The magazine changed the headline Tuesday night to “Tucker Carlson Show Aired By Russian State TV.”
“Newsweek is very obviously trying to give the Biden administration a pretext to read my personal communications under [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act],” Carlson told RealClearPolitics. “Total bullsh-t in every way.”
In another statement to Mediaite, Carlson called the report of his launching a show in Russia “completely absurd.”
“Reporters are so dishonest and stupid,” Carlson said. “I’ve never even heard of this channel.”
Newsweek published a similar story last September reporting Russian media had begun broadcasting Carlson’s X program on the state-controlled airwaves.
“It has since emerged that the Russian state TV channel has begun airing clips from Carlson’s social media show, which the commentator said had been done without his ‘knowledge or approval,’” Newsweek reported last year. “Carlson has often been accused of playing into Russian propaganda, but he has stopped short of appearing as a paid host on Russian TV.”
Carlson accused the National Security Agency (NSA) of spying on him three years ago when a whistleblower preemptively leaked details of the federal surveillance operation to the cable news anchor.
“The NSA — the National Security Agency — is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air,” Carlson said in June 2021. “The whistleblower, who is in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails. … The NSA captured that information without our knowledge.”
“Spying on opposition journalists is incompatible with democracy,” Carlson added.
At the time, Carlson was attempting to arrange an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (The conservative podcaster ultimately aired a sit-down discussion with Putin in February of this year.) Carlson abruptly left Fox News in April last year after leading as network television’s no. 1 cable news host for years.
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