Tucker Carlson, by Gage Skidmore, creative commons license attribution share-alike 2.0 license, courtesy of  Wikimedia.

Eli Lake, at The Free Press, pillories Tucker Carlson for his obsequiousness toward tyrants, very much including Putin, and connivances with fascist crackpots.  Excerpt:

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Really bad. But what was most appalling was Tucker’s descent into moral relativism, his muddying of the line between good and evil. For Tucker, America is not exceptional; it is no better than its enemies. And this is particularly corrosive, because he is persuading a large segment of the American right to abandon its rightful contempt for foreign tyrants, terrorists, and cranks.

First came Moscow. He told us he was dazzled by the city’s gleaming subways and orderly fast-food restaurants. Then he interviewed Russian despot and world-champion liar Vladimir Putin, allowing him to deliver a slanted history of his country’s dominion over western Ukraine. Never once did Tucker ask him about Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who died ten days after the interview in one of Putin’s Arctic dungeons.

(Tucker’s fawning chat with the Russian tyrant stood in sharp contrast to his coverage of Ukraine’s elected leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. …)

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So what the hell happened to Tucker Carlson?

The skepticism that served him well in the Trump years when much of the fourth estate behaved like an opposition political party has led him all the way around the horseshoe. His opposition to the people he hates—liberals and neocons—has turned him into Noam Chomsky in a bow tie.

Tucker was correct when he punctured the relentless speculation and anonymous reporting that led so many journalists to believe President Trump was a Russian agent. He was right when he said the real story was the Democratic Party colluding with the FBI to smear the Trump campaign. But he is wrong when he asserts that Israel and America are no better than their enemies. Once Tucker was too smart to allow his ideological rivals to determine his opinions. Now he proudly apologizes for evil and calls it the truth.

Glory to Ukraine!