3 years ago
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It turns out that the NSA wasn’t spying on Tucker Carlson, but the Fox News host was talking to the Kremlin about interviewing Putin.
Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before the Fox News host accused the National Security Agency of spying on him, sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios.
Why it matters: Those sources said U.S. government officials learned about Carlson’s efforts to secure the Putin interview. Carlson learned that the government was aware of his outreach — and that’s the basis of his extraordinary accusation, followed by a rare public denial by the NSA that he had been targeted.
Carlson has offered no evidence for his claim that the NSA is out to get him. He has given his viewers no proof to support the idea that the US government is out to get him.
Tucker Carlson also left out the fact that if he was on the radar of the NSA, it was because he was talking to the Kremlin. Carlson tried to pull a page out of the Trump playbook by claiming that the government was spying on him, only for the American people to find out that just like the Trump campaign in 2016, Carlson landed on the radar of national security officials because he was talking to Russia.
The NSA wasn’t spying on Tucker Carlson, but the Fox News host was trying to give one of America’s enemies a free hour of propaganda on his show.
Mr. Easley is the managing editor, who is White House Press Pool, and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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