Tucker’s War on Ukraine
Just hours after the explosion of the Nova Kakhovka Dam, the former FOX contributor accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before an audience now in excess of 110 million Twitter viewers of responsibility for this “act of terrorism,” but failed to support his incendiary accusation.
Tucker Carlson is like the little girl with the curl - "when [he] is good, [he] is very, very good, but when [he] is bad, [he] is horrid."
The man who often emerged as a voice of sanity during the turbulent heights of riots and pandemic lockdowns has spent more than a year emulating the worst practices he condemns in the mainstream media through his coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Omission of facts vital for his audience to reach rational conclusions, unsubstantiated speculation presented as “obvious” truth, and relentless mockery of Ukrainian defenders have been his calling card. There is a lurking sense that within hours of a story breaking, Tucker’s confirmation bias drives a reverse engineering process that always leads to the same conclusion - everyone is lying to you - except me.
The destroyed Nova Kakhovka Dam, Kherson Region, Ukraine
Exhibit A: For his inaugural launch of "Tucker Carlson on Twitter," the former FOX host told more than one hundred and ten million viewers that the government of Ukraine is responsible for targeting the Nova Kakhovka Dam for failure, thus creating the largest ecological European disaster of the 21st century and committing an act of terrorism responsible for the death and suffering of untold numbers of Ukrainians.
Not a maybe. Not a possibility. Tucker charged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with terrorism against his own people and presented his charge as an “obvious” conclusion.
That's a big claim and one with far-reaching implications for the people of Ukraine, for the defense of their nation, and for the vital security interests of the United States. Tucker had better have facts to prove this claim. If not, he should be discredited as a commentator, at least on Ukraine.
The recent accusation against Ukraine is the latest charge in a sixteen month crescendo of unrelenting contempt and unsubstantiated accusations that look remarkably similar to the headlines of Putin’s Russia Today.
The Scope of the Tragedy
Evacuees escaping the flood waters.
In the middle of the night on June 6, the Russian controlled dam was destroyed using detonation by individuals with access to the facility. There are no artillery shells that could create this kind of damage to a cement reinforced dam like Kakhovka. This kind of breach happens from some powerful explosives placed right up against it.
The fallout of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam has been described as the largest European ecological disaster of the 21st century. One commentator described the panorama of flooding over Kherson as an eerie Venice with water lapping at the windows, but with Soviet era buildings instead of Italian architecture. The death toll is unknown, but tens of thousands have lost access to clean drinking water. Evacuation is still ongoing. Sewage floats in the water, and the flooding has displaced Russian landmines. Agricultural land has been decimated. At least a hundred and fifty tons of fuel oil now flow through rivers into the Black Sea.
Russia’s response to the flood has been to deny responsibility for the blast, to deny third party aid to Ukranians in Russian occupied land affected by the flooding, and to continue shelling civilians fighting to survive the flood waters on the West Bank of Kherson.
It took Tucker on Twitter no more than sixteen hours to conclude with absolute certainty the culprit behind the disaster and to label the explosion an “act of terrorism.” That is barely enough time to gather data, let alone reach definitive conclusions. Yet Tucker was prepared to tell the world that the same President Zelensky of Ukraine, whom millions of Ukrainians believe is defending their nation against Russian invaders, is actually a terrorist who acts with ruthless disregard for his own people.
On June 6, 2023, the Kakhovka Dam was deliberately destroyed, causing catastrophic drainage of the reservoir. At the time, the dam was under the control of the Russian military which had seized it in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Tucker’s Case
Tucker’s argument was based on four assertions: First, misleading information about the dam itself. Second, an irrelevant and out-of-context quote found in the Washington Post offered by a Ukrainian general in 2022 that Tucker alleges proves Ukrainian intention to blow up the dam. Third, Tucker’s personal conclusion that there was no military benefit for Russia to blow up the dam, and, in fact, a dam breach injures Russia more than Ukraine. Finally, uniquely highlighted by Tucker, President Zelensky is a sweaty, rat-like man who talks about killing “populations” of people.
Tucker: “The question is who did it? Well, let’s see: The Nova Kakhovka Dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea which has been, for the last 240 years, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.”
Response: No, the dam is completely Ukrainian in the same way that structures built by the British during colonial rule in America are the exclusive property of the United States today; in the same way that everything in Ukraine belongs to Ukraine and is no longer under the control of the Soviet Union.
Construction on the Nova Kakhovka Dam began under Joseph Stalin in 1950, but the Ukrainian soil and the dam on it were returned to Ukraine in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Tucker carefully avoids linking the creation of the dam to the actual people who built it - the Marxist Leninist government called the Soviet Union which began construction of the dam under the rule of Joseph Stalin in 1950. Russian control of the dam ended in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine. It was in 2019 under the presidency of Zelensky that significant repairs and extensions were made to the dam which is highly profitable to the local and national government of Ukraine.
Tucker states that the dam “currently sits in Russian controlled territory.” Yes, in the same way that the Eiffel Tower of Paris, France belonged to Germany in 1944 because it “currently [sat] in Nazi controlled territory.” Context is everything. In February of 2022, the Russian military invaded Kherson, killed citizens, enslaved the population, and stole the dam from Ukraine. They have been there for just over a year.
Tucker: “The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea which has been, for the last 240 years, home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.”
Response: This is a vast oversimplification designed to create the impression that Russia has always had a legitimate stake in the dam. As to the Russian Black Fleet, it was divided into a Ukrainian and Russian fleet after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and has been been a point of controversy ever since. As to the dam, it did not provide water to Crimea from 2014 to 2022, as a result of the unlawful seizure of Crimea and the stationing there of Russian troops with weapons aimed at Ukraine.
Tucker: “If this was intentional, it was not a military tactic. It was an act of terrorism.”
Response: To the contrary. Destroying the dam could have a substantial military benefit to Russia. At this time, Russia is preparing for the real possibility that they will be driven off the East Bank of Kherson (where the dam resides), even as they were driven from the West Bank by Ukrainian liberators. If blowing up the dam causes the Ukrainians to divert massive resources to rescue missions and creates logistical challenges making the recapture of the East Bank more difficult, then blowing up the dam has a significant military rationale, which is precisely why the Russians have been discussing blowing up the dam since taking it from the people of Ukraine and then losing the West Bank of Kherson.
That being said, the Russian invasion has been characterized by scorched earth tactics that might claim a military purpose, but include the terrorist objective of intimidating the civilian population and striking fear to inflict as much damage as possible on Ukraine.
Tucker: “…for precisely that reason the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it. In December, the Washington Post quoted a Ukrainian general saying his men had fired American made rockets at the dam’s floodgate, as a test strike. So really, once the facts start coming, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam, and a fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up.”
Response: First question: If the Washington Post is always lying to us, why would Tucker cite them as the one and only evidentiary basis to support his claim?
To the point - the article Tucker claims is the basis for “facts” that prove Ukrainian guilt does not say what Tucker claims it says, but something altogether different.
Here is what we actually learn from the Washington Post article: Maj. Gen. Andriy Kovalchuk, the commander of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Ukraine, needed to cut off supplies to Russian troops. He was looking at options. One was to flood the Dnieper River without destroying the dam.
Tom Norton of Newsweek explained it this way, “The river separated 25,000 Russian troops from supplies, with Russia arming and feeding its forces via three crossings: Antonovsky Bridge, the Antonovsky railway bridge, and the Nova Kakhovka dam. Both bridges were targeted by U.S. supplied HIMARS launchers. Kovalchuk added that HIMARS were used in a test strike on one of the dam's floodgates, “making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper's water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings, but not flood nearby villages.’”
Even though the tests were successful, Maj. Gen. Andriy Kovalchuk said the strategy was a last resort, and abandoned it. This is a far cry from Tucker’s claim that Ukraine has been planning to blow up the dam. Bottom line: Tucker has built his argument from a quote in a paper he does not trust, and then misrepresented the contents of the article - the type of misrepresentation that Tucker understandably finds offensive when directed at him.
Tucker: “Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more. . ..It's not like Vladimir Putin is anxious to wage war on himself.”
Response: Really? Let's think about this remarkable claim from Tucker. This is a Ukrainian dam that financially supports the Ukrainian government. It protects thousands of Ukrainian communities, businesses, and lives. The destruction of the dam causes an ecological hardship unprecedented in the modern history of Ukraine for which Ukraine must divert vast wartime resources to ameliorate the crisis. Furthermore, the destruction of the dam causes significant impediments for Ukrainian defenders positioned to retake the East Bank of Kherson from Russian occupiers. How do we quantify this loss?
On the other hand, what does Russia lose? Water for their troops in Crimea? Maybe, but they were not getting water from this dam from 2014 to 2022. The Russians created the water crisis when they annexed Crimea and placed Ukraine in a militarily defensive position. Russia next responded by investing vast sums of rubles into water solutions. Since the destruction of the dam last week, their message to the world has been: all is well in Crimea. The worst hydrological implication for Russia of destroying the dam is that they return to the status quo they have lived with since taking Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Argument by Ad Hominem
Tucker’s narrative next turns to a series of ad hominem in which Tucker describes President Zelensky as “sweaty and rat like. A comedian turned oligarch. A persecutor of Christians…”
Where to begin?
“Sweaty and rat like” - May I gently suggest that, in 2023, it is bad optics to describe the Jewish President of Ukraine with the same characteristics used in the Goebbels-commissioned film Der Ewige Jude, (1940) or by NAZI propagandist Julius Streicher in Der Sturmer to dehumanize the Children of Abraham.
“A comedian turn president” - Right, like Ronald Reagan?
Excuse me, Tucker said, “comedian turned oligarch.”
O.K. Prove it, Tucker. Lay out the facts for your oligarch accusation. Ukrainians certainly don’t see it that way. On the other hand, it is difficult to find reasonable Russians who don’t acknowledge their nation is run by “a KGB agent turn oligarch.” Many believe Putin to be the richest man in the world, if not also the most powerful.
Speaking of KGB agents, Tucker next charged President Zelensky with persecution of Christians. A more accurate assessment would be that Zelensky has defended persecuted Orthodox Ukrainian Christians from their persecutors in the KGB-dominated Russian Orthodox Church patriarchy of Moscow. (For more, see my article on the KGB Persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.)
Where does Tucker get this? Can you guess? Similar snarks can be found online in trolling campaigns generated by Russian bot farms, as well as trending stories from Russian dezinformatsia publications.
And there is no small amount of irony. When Moscow complains about the persecution of its church agents stationed in Ukraine, it is a bit like the fox complaining about mistreatment from the chickens in the henhouse.
These are the “truths” which Tucker insists the media has been hiding from us on Ukraine? Have we reached the place that a man is accused of terrorism because a celebrity commentator finds him “sweaty and rat like?”
Tucker’s Tell
Which brings us to Tucker’s conclusion: “It's not like Vladimir Putin is anxious to wage war on himself.”
More than anything said in the broadcast up until now, the above is Tucker’s “tell” - the key to all the bluff and bluster which up to now has been camouflage for the heart of the matter - Tucker Carlson supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
At least it appears that way.
Does he have a nuanced perpective? I don’t doubt that. Critics allow themselves what they deny to others. Might he want to offer caveats? Probably. Clarifications? I am sure plenty.
But at the end of the day, 100% of his energy on this subject is spent discrediting Ukraine and the leaders defending their nation from blood thirsty occupiers, and none on exposing the crimes of the blood thirsty occupiers.
Perhaps that is why Tucker found so offensive a video of a conversation between President Zelensky and Senator Lyndsey Graham. In the video as presented by Tucker, the two men were made to sound like they were talking about how good it is to spend money to kill Russians.
After the show Tucker was exposed for using an edited version of the meeting.
Tucker: “Senator Graham rejoices in the deaths of Russians.”
Response: There are a lot of problems with Tucker’s comment, not the least of which was that he based it on an altered video. SPRAVDI-Stratcom Centre (The Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security of Ukraine) took note of Tucker’s accusation. They released the following comment condemning Tucker’s distribution of the video edit which misrepresents the original dialogue between President Zelensky and Senator Graham:
Tucker Carlson used a video of a meeting between Senator Lindsey Graham and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. The video was edited to combine two of the senator's phrases in different contexts: "Yes, the Russians are dying" and "This is the best thing we've ever spent money on.” But Graham's statements about the deaths of Russians and the spending of American money do not follow each other. The unedited version of this conversation was made public. But Tucker Carlson ignored it.”
Then there is this comment from Tucker, “See, there's something dark here; just two middle aged guys celebrating the killing of a population.”
Wait, “killing a population?” Like genocide? Is Tucker suggesting that killing Russian invaders is attacking a population? Since when have military invaders been considered a “population?” Is he really implying that the self-defense of Ukraine is tantamount to a Russian genocide? Isn’t killing a population exactly what Russia has been doing when it targets Ukrainian civilians and levels entire cities? Shouldn't every lover of freedom rejoice when blood thirsty invaders wrongfully waging war on a population are defeated through surrender, expulsion, or death?
Tucker on Twitter is a show which claims to be about freedom and truth. But if Episode One is our standard, freedom is a concept that applies to broadcast commentators, but not to the children of Bucha who were forced to watch their mothers raped and fathers and brothers executed by Russian invaders, their bodies burned and left to rot in garbage cans and streets. Freedom applies to American viewers, but not to 14 million displaced Ukrainians fleeing Russian terror. This is the essence of ugly Americanism - a cocktail of hubris, ignorance of the facts, know-it-all-ism when it comes to deciding what is best for other nations, with an emphasis on freedom for Americans, but little concern for the welfare of others.
Why? Because one only reaches the conclusion that Putin is not anxious to wage war on himself if you concede that he owns the occupied lands his invasion army has seized. Tucker seems to be saying: Why would Vladimir Putin blow up his own dam, on his own soil, affecting water to his own people? Therefore, “Zelensky committed this unconscionable act of terror.”
Tucker’s Personal War
Irresponsible. Outrageous. But not a one-off. The accusation that Zelensky is a terrorist is consistent with nearly a year and a half of war commentary on Ukraine in which Tucker has emerged as the Tokyo Rose of the Kremlin, always available to distract American audiences from Moscow’s latest atrocity with disparaging taunts aimed at Kyiv.
Since February 2022, Tucker has given his audience one whopper after another, typically following a similar formula: gross misrepresentation of an establishing fact; smoke and mirrors historical revisionism; contempt and ad hominem directed personally at President Zelensky; and concluding with a claim intended to shock.
Tucker’s relentless mockery has a puerile school yard quality that appears to push the boundaries of online verbal meltdown. He has described President Zelenesky of dressing like a “strip club manager,” of being “shifty” and “dead-eyed,” and acting like a sleazy street thug come to “demand money.” He once opined that “Zelensky himself is a very dark force. That is obvious if you watch him. It is unmistakable. Who could not see that? This man is a destroyer.” As to the Russian assault on Ukraine, Tucker assures Americans that it is merely a distant “border-dispute,” a characterization which earned him high praise from the Kremlin.
Mockery Sells
Both Vladimir Putin and his close ally Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow served the Soviet Union as agents of the KGB, and both have engaged in the persecution of the Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
There is a large body of viewers who tuned into Tucker’s broadcast on FOX, and now Tucker on Twitter, who identify with his core narrative - “They are lying to you.”
One can understand why this sentiment resonates. Lying is exactly what many politicians and media are prone to do. We do have enormous problems with manipulation of information by elites. No sector is free of this problem: Left. Right. Hollywood. Madison Avenue. Various industries and, notably, Washington, D.C.
The issue here is that millions of viewers who agree with Tucker’s premise assume that they can trust him to have done his research. They assume that if he makes a huge claim - “Ukrainians deliberately bomb Poland,” or “Zelensky shuts down opposition parties,” or “Zelensky perpetrates an act of terrorism against his own people by blowing up a Russian dam,” that Tucker has done his research before releasing it to millions. They assume that he is the lone voice of honesty, decency, and fairness.
But when it comes to Ukraine, Tucker isn’t selling research. He is selling contempt - The ability to humiliate and mock an opponent into oblivion. In the absence of real arguments, he makes fun of an enemy’s facial attributes and clothing. After all, Trump does it. CNN does it. Why not Tucker?
The Most Documented War in History
The problem for Tucker is that the war in Ukraine may be the best documented in history. Not because the story is dominated by American media elites. It’s not. The American media plays a secondary and often derivative role to the coverage from news sources from around the world and on the ground in Ukraine.
If Tucker knows something that 40 million witnesses in Ukraine with smart phones do not, he has yet to share it. If he has access to some smoking gun information that exculpates the seemingly insensible crimes of Vladimir Putin, tell us.
But scouring headlines from Russia Today, or lifting conspiracy theories generated by Moscow’s bot farms, or invoking the “Deep State,” or passing around Oliver Stone’s personal collaboration documentary with Vladimir Putin does not bring anyone closer to the truth.
“[Tucker] has avoided the core question - Does one nation have the right to invade another sovereign nation, wage war on its civilian population, and leave its cities, industries, and communities desolate from relentless bombings? ”
Tucker’s Omissions
The world is presented with incontrovertible evidence of Russian mass murders, rapes, and other atrocities committed in Bucha. Tucker Carlson choses not to cover the event.
The fact is that in fifteen months, Tucker has not produced one broadcast of trustworthy original research or investigative journalism on Ukraine. He has repeatedly accused without meaningful references that stand cursory scrutiny. He has omitted conversations about facts and events that cast light on the criminal behavior of the Russian army in Ukraine, the suffering of the people of Ukraine, and the political and religious oppression of Vladimir Putin.
He has avoided the core question - Does one nation have the right to invade another sovereign nation, wage war on its civilian population, and leave its cities, industries, and communities desolate from relentless bombings?
In March 2022, Russian forces carried out an air strike on a theater in Mariupol which was being used as a refuge for children. Tucker focused on his opposition to Zelensky.
In April 2022, the world wept as evidence emerged of Russians raping mothers and daughters in front of their family, shooting fathers and sons in the head in their back yards, and dumping burned mangled bodies of civilians in the streets and sewers. Four hundred civilians murdered by Putin’s assassin army. Tucker said nothing.
Again in September 2022, 450 bodies, mostly of civilians, found in mass graves in Izium, in the Kharkiv region. Tucker said nothing.
For fifteen months, the world stood in complete shock until we have become numb. The testimony of tens of thousands of eye witnesses and reporters from dozens of nations echoes — an entire year of hospital and school bombings by Putin, the torture of Ukrainian prisoners, the capture and deportation of Ukrainian children by Russian thugs. And on and on.
But nothing from Tucker. Nothing but contempt for the government of Ukraine.
The Conservative Dilemma
“[The Soviets] preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth; they are the focus of evil in the modern world.” Ronald Reagan, March 1983
"I have said on a number of occasions exactly what I believe about the Soviet Union, I retract nothing that I have said, I believe that many of the things that they have done are evil in any concept of morality that we have." President Ronald Reagan, Evil Empire Speech, 1984
There was and remains one test that the Soviet Union has fallen - the liberation of Russian-occupied nations, and the rights of their people to self-determination outside the grip of Moscow.
The invasion of Ukraine may present the most significant ideological dilemma of the century for American conservatives - one which will determine whether they will be driven by principle or reaction.
They must answer the question: Should the February 2022 Russian invasion be viewed through the lens of historic principles of freedom including Christian Just War Theory and national sovereignty or through a lens of utter detestation for anything championed by the Biden Administration and the “Mainstream Media?”
Throw into the mix a secondary question: Should the history of this region be viewed through the historic post-WWII perspective of America, its Cold War Allies, and those nations liberated after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, or through Putin’s distinctively Soviet revival perspective?
The pro-Putin branch of the American Right may be dogmatic, but they still wince a little when being outed for their new identity as champions of an invasion philosophy rooted in the Marxist Leninism of past generations.
What Has Happened?
During the waning years of the 1930s, a vocal group of American isolationists responded to German imperialism by urging neutrality. These conservative isolationist Americans came in different shades and degrees, but three things held them together: a strong sense of nationalism and opposition to global politics; a desire for America to stay out of a new war; and a general appreciation of the nationalistic zeal and the heightened moral standards they believed were part of Hitler’s Germany. Many even doubled down on their positions after German invasions in the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia.
In many respects, Tucker’s love affair with Moscow is leading conservative viewers to a similar position. But why? Have Americans forgotten so quickly the lessons of the last century? What has driven individuals on the Right who claim to be advocates for freedom, many emerging from within the Christian Just War tradition and the Reagan Freedom Legacy, to turn their backs on fundamentals of their historic ideology by embracing the very Neo-Soviet expansionist narrative which their forbears spent the better part of a century denouncing?
The answer appears to be frustration, anger, and disillusionment with the status quo.
Many Americans are fed up with the media. They are fed up with politics as usual. They have legitimate concerns about the abusive and corrupt nature of American politics. They are still reeling from the chaos of the last few years. But the last thing they need is a solution which is worse than the problem. It is certainly possible to combat media corruption and government misinformation without emulating the very practices deemed so offensive. It is not necessary to vilify men and women engaged in a heroic struggle against an evil invasion in order to raise legitimate questions about how our nation uses its resources to support them. It is never acceptable to present speculation as fact at the expense of the lives of others.
Despite all the above, I believe Tucker is an important voice with much to offer. At the moment, Tucker gives the impression of having become so angry that he has lost his way, that he has transformed into the very dragon he told us he would slay. Hopefully, this will change. Tucker can do better.
America is a Democratic Republic in need of irenic, thoughtful debate. Whether his new broadcast will be part of the solution rather than a variation of the broader problem is more a function of Tucker’s tactics than any one of his conclusions. There are many like myself who would welcome meaningful discussion on the who, what, where, when, and how of American support for Ukraine. That is not a conversation any of us wish to have with someone who adds to the already enormous suffering of the people of Ukraine by falsely accusing their leader of mass murder while not offering a shred of meaningful evidence to back up the claim.
Right now, Tucker is at war with Ukraine. But as a new power axis of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea emerges, Tucker may someday find himself in the same position as the isolationists of 1939 who did triple summersaults to mock Churchill’s constant appeals for U.S. aid and who provided political cover for the invasion practices and ethics of the Third Reich until they were forced to abandon that position on December 7, 1941.
As more information emerges, it is difficult to conclude that anyone but the Russians controlling the dam used explosives to blow it. Such an act would be completely consistent with a Russian military strategy to maintain control of the East Bank of Kherson. It would be consistent with what is now a watertight conclusion: The Russian disregard for human life in Ukraine, a sovereign nation which does not belong to them.
DW Phillips is an attorney, filmmaker, producer, writer, and published author. He was involved in war correspondence during the 1980s in Central America and Angola. His great grandfather escaped capture by Russian soldiers to emigrate from Lviv, Ukraine to the United States with his sweetheart, and then proceeded to help sixteen Jewish Ukranians from his childhood community make the same journey to freedom. He is presently working on a documentary about the faith, courage, and unity of ordinary Ukrainians in times of invasion.
