A former top official in the Reagan administration said Monday that she nearly had a stroke listening to Tucker Carlson’s positive comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It is so appalling what is taking place on Fox News,” Linda Chavez, who served as the director of the Office of Public Liaison in the Reagan administration, said on The Bulwark’s “Beg to Differ” podcast. “And it’s Tucker Carlson. It’s Laura Ingraham. It’s Greg Gutfeld. Greg, by the way, he is married to a Ukrainian woman. He just had to help his mother-in-law escape Ukraine. So, I do not understand this.”
As for Carlson, Chavez said his comments nearly gave her a stroke.
“He started essentially apologizing for Vladimir Putin, which he does almost every night on his show,” said Chavez. “I got so angry. If Tucker Carlson had been in striking distance, I would have pummeled him.”
Chavez, a senior fellow at the National Immigration Forum who left the Republican Party in 2020 to become an independent because of the rigged election lies, also blasted Fox News for fear-mongering in a bid keep the U.S. from providing any further help to Ukraine.
“In addition to bashing NATO and acting as if NATO is somehow a threat to world peace, is that they are also trying to scare their listeners into thinking that if we do anything more ― including providing the S-300s, providing the drone switchblades, providing airplanes, or God forbid, actually setting up a no-fly zone ― that Vladimir Putin is going to launch a nuclear attack. And that it’s going to be justified, essentially,” she said.
And it’s working. Chavez said her brother-in-law, who watches Carlson religiously, is considering fleeing to Mexico to avoid a potential nuclear strike.
In recent years, Carlson has become the Kremlin’s poster boy for Russian propaganda.
“The Russian state agencies are actually saying, ‘Use Tucker Carlson on Russian networks. Use him as much as you can.’ There was a leaked memo about trying to use clips from Tucker Carlson to let the Russian people know that Americans know how dangerous this is,’” Chavez said.
Check out the full podcast here. Chavez talks about Fox News beginning at 25:00.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
