Policy director Phillip Longman co-authored a piece that takes a closer look at the people and ideas fueling the cable news host’s brand of conservatism.

On February 22, as tensions that would soon spill into war mounted on the Ukrainian border, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson opened his show—the most popular cable news program in the country—with a searing monologue ripping into the U.S. foreign policy establishment. At the center of it was a sinister question: Why should Americans hate Vladimir Putin?

In a series of rhetorical questions, Carlson asked: 

Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs?

“These are fair questions,” he continued, coming to his point. “And the answer is no.”

Carlson’s defense of Putin immediately drew wide condemnation from liberals, who compared it to the way Donald Trump speaks about the Russian dictator. But another common theme of Carlson’s is not so obviously illiberal.

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