While there are countless things Tucker Carlson truly does not understand, NATO likely isn’t one of them. Yet, in his ongoing quest to endear himself to Vladimir Putin and the Russian propagandists who hold him in the highest regard, he’s back to pretending that he’s truly baffled by NATO’s continued existence.
On Monday night, Carlson had some comments on the current proposed expansions to NATO, which would include adding Finland and Sweden. But basically, he seems to not get why NATO is even a thing.
“OK, so NATO is the most successful military alliance in world history. Yes, it kept the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe. What is the point of NATO now? Can anyone explain? No. No one can explain. Instead of explaining, we hear demands that NATO explain as rapidly as possible—damn the consequences. And the benefits to the United States. What are the benefits exactly? Again, silence.”
Tucker: What is the point of NATO now? Can anyone explain? No, no one can explain pic.twitter.com/fOhbbE7Cz5
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 17, 2022
It didn’t really help that Carlson was asking these questions out loud to no one but himself.
While Mitch McConnell has made it clear that he sees no problem with approving the new members, not everyone is as gung-ho about the plan. Carlson is clearly one of them. Meanwhile, Turkey is threatening to block the expansion. Putin, on the other hand, seems to be flip-flopping. On Monday, Al Jazeera reported that Putin said admitting both countries would pose “no direct threat for [Russia] … but the expansion of military infrastructure to these territories will certainly provoke our response.” Yet Fortune reports he also claimed, again on Monday, that “Russia has no problems with these states.”
On Monday, Finnish president Sauli Niinisto admitted that he called Putin directly to let him know of his country’s intention to join NATO, and was surprised by just how calmly Vlad took the news.
“Altogether the discussion was very good,” Niinisto said on Sunday, according to Fox News (of all places). “I say calm and cool, and he did not repeat those threats he had earlier, and his people had been telling that is that if Finland joins—that means some kind of contra steps, military contra steps, whatever that meant—but he didn’t repeat it now.”
Still, Carlson didn’t seem to want to take any chances in pissing off his Kremlin superfans, so he toed the line perfectly by pretending to really not understand or care about any of it. You can watch part of his commentary above.