Right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson claimed the Biden administration tried to have Russian President Vladimir Putin assassinated without offering any evidence to support his incendiary allegation.
“The Biden administration did, they tried to kill Putin,” the onetime Fox News broadcaster said on the Monday episode of his The Tucker Carlson Show podcast.
After his guest, journalist Matt Taibbi, casually interjected—“Really?”—Carlson doubled down on his assertion.
“Yes, yes, they did, which is insane,” Carlson continued, wondering aloud who would be in control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal if Putin were dead.
“That’s demented that you would even think of something like that,” he added, without providing a scintilla of information to support his allegation. “So why were they? Because chaos is a screen that protects them.”
Carlson said he couldn’t really work out why the U.S. government would try to take Putin out: “I mean, I don’t know this. That’s just like watching what they’re doing, I’m like ‘Why would they be doing that?’”
Former President Joe Biden’s term overlapped with Russia launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, greatly expanding the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War and, according to the United Nations, violating international law.
The United States has since provided tens of billions of dollars in humanitarian, government and military aid to Ukraine.
The Kremlin responded Tuesday with a vague statement that didn’t explicitly address Carlson’s claims.
“Russian intelligence agencies consistently take all necessary measures to ensure public safety and the security of those under state protection, especially the head of state,” said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, according to local state media.
Carlson has a long history of flirting with baseless conspiracy theories, from touting narratives derived from the white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory to spreading dangerous falsehoods about COVID vaccines.
He has also frequently echoed Kremlin talking points about Ukraine, wrongly claiming the country “is not a democracy” and that “in American terms, you would call Ukraine a tyranny.”
The Kremlin was at one point so fond of Carlson that state media were told it was “essential” to feature him during broadcasts.
Carlson visited Moscow in February 2024, where he recorded a lengthy sit-down interview with Putin that was derailed by the Russian leader giving a bizarre, rambling lecture full of historical misrepresentations in which he tried to dismiss Ukraine’s claim to statehood.
The compliant Carlson spent most of the rest of the interview lobbing softballs at his subject. He went back to Russia in December to interview Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
