Former Fox News Host Tucker Carlson accused Newsweek of attempting to provide the federal government with a reason to spy on him through a fabricated report about his show airing in Russia. On Tuesday, Newsweek reported that Carlson had launched a show on Russian state television before walking the claims back hours later.
“Tucker Carlson launches show on Russian state TV,” read the original headline. According to Newsweek, footage of Carlson’s X show aired on Russia 24 and was translated into Russian. The headline was later changed 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.”
“Total bullshit in every way,” Tucker Carlson tells me of @Newsweek claims that he launched his show on Russian state TV.
“Newsweek is very obviously trying to give the Biden administration a pretext to read my personal communications under FISA. It’s pretty dark.” pic.twitter.com/eXm1l07qp0
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) May 21, 2024
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 that Russian media had begun broadcasting Carlson’s X program on 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.”
NEW: Fox News host Tucker Carlson says a government whistleblower told his team that the NSA is spying on his team’s electronic communications and is “planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.” pic.twitter.com/DqOf6jndFC
— Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) June 29, 2021
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.
