Boris Johnson calls out Tucker Carlson for 2-hour Putin interview: 'Bum-sucking servility to a tyrant'

• Former UK PM Boris Johnson criticized Tucker Carlson for his two-hour interview with Vladimir Putin.
• Johnson said Carlson failed to challenge Putin and question him about killing civilians in Ukraine.

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called out Tucker Carlson after he went to Moscow to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“When Tucker Carlson went to the Kremlin, he had a function well known to history. He was to be the stooge of the tyrant, the dictaphone to the dictator and a traitor to journalism,” Johnson wrote in an op-ed for the Daily Mail on Friday.

“In his fawning, guffawing, slack-jawed happiness at having a ‘scoop,’ he betrayed his viewers and listeners around the world,” Johnson wrote.

During the controversial two-hour interview, Putin dominated the conversation, scarcely allowing Carlson to speak and steamrolling him with dubious historical assertions to justify the war in Ukraine.

Carlson did not challenge Putin on the invasion of Ukraine nor raise questions about accusations of war crimes and the targeting of civilians, Johnson noted in his op-ed.

The UN Human Rights Council has said that Russia has used mass killings, rape, and torture in an attempt to subjugate Ukraine.

Using British slang for buttocks, Johnson called the interview "bum-sucking servility to a tyrant."

At one point in the interview, Putin blamed then-Prime Minister Johnson for derailing peace talks with Ukraine in 2022, claiming that he convinced Ukraine it was “better to fight Russia.”

He described Johnson as having a "pure heart" but "not a great mind."

In the op-ed, Johnson wrote that Putin’s interview with Carlson was straight out of “Hitler's playbook.”

He drew a comparison with an interview Adolf Hitler gave to a sympathetic German-American journalist shortly after he invaded France in 1940.

Johnson added that Putin’s talking points about history and perceived injustices toward Russian-speaking people echoed Hitler’s narratives about German-speaking people.

The interview with Carlson was the first Putin has done with a Western journalist since he invaded Ukraine nearly two years ago.

While promoting the interview, Carlson falsely claimed that other Western journalists have not “bothered” to interview the Russian president — a claim denied even by the Kremlin, which said they have turned down multiple other Western journalists due to their “one-sided stance.”

The interview was significant because Putin is seeking to erode support for Ukraine among GOP voters, who form Carlson's core audience, as congressional Republicans continue to block a $60 billion aid bill that Ukraine needs to defend itself.

It also boosted Carlson’s profile after he left Fox News in 2023.

Carlson has previously said he does not care about accusations that he is a “pawn of Putin” after being accused of repeating Kremlin propaganda points on his Fox News show.