The New Walter Duranty

Meet Vladimir Putin’s Useful Idiot

I once believed that Fox News firing Tucker Carlson would lead to great things for the former host. I thought an unbound Tucker, free of the strictures of Fox, would be a force for good.

Boy, was I wrong.

When I posted last year’s “Ten Most Tiresome People” column in December, I mentioned to my brother that I made a last-minute substitution to the list just hours before I published it, switching Tucker Carlson out for Alina Habba.

Mark was stunned that Tucker made the list in the first place. He thought I liked Tucker Carlson. I used to enjoy his monologues on Fox. Then again, I used to like Donald Trump as well until he turned into an obsessive, vindictive crank, which is why he was last year’s Number One most tiresome person.

Tucker spent the months following his termination sliding further down the conspiracy theory rat-hole to the point where he was indistinguishable from the histrionic nut-jobs that skitter around the far-right online universe like meth-addled cockroaches.

Instead of aiming for journalistic integrity and truth-telling, Tucker opted for engagement farming by feeding the tinfoil-hatted masses a steady diet of conspiracies while playing footsie with Jew-hating cranks and rabid anti-Semites.

Tucker transforming into a Useful Idiot for Vladimir Putin is the least surprising next step in his slide to irrelevance.

Unlike Stalin’s Useful Idiot Walter Duranty, they won’t be showering Tucker with Pulitzer Prizes for his videos praising the wonders of a Moscow grocery store most Muscovites can’t afford to shop in or the lavish subway stations built for just this kind of Useful Idiot.

Then again, Tucker’s aim isn’t the Pulitzer. His aim is monetization.

I don’t think Tucker Carlson is a Russia True Believer. He just knows on what side his bread is buttered.

If Tucker wants to monetize his burgeoning Twitter-based media empire to the fullest, he’s got to give the people what they want. And right now, the Terminally Online Right is simply mad for Vlad.

Ukraine is their enemy because all the politicians they despise support funding Ukraine’s war with Russia. Since the Terminally Online Right does not do nuance, their hatred for Ukraine inevitably means siding with Russia.

Tucker must therefore also side with Russia if he wants the Terminally Online Right to watch — and more importantly, share — his videos.

I know. It’s crazy. But them’s the rules.

Tucker’s Big Fat Russian Propaganda videos are pissing off sane people who can’t believe that this seemingly intelligence man would turn Useful Idiot. But to Tucker, their anger is an added benefit. Remember, when monetization through maximum engagement is the goal, even the flood of negative responses (AKA “the ratio”) is a net positive.

As I explained in my column “The Engagement Whores of X:”

Nobody wanted to get ratioed on the old Twitter. It was the social media equivalent of walking around with toilet paper stuck to your shoe.

But now, with Musk's new scheme, a ratio is a good thing since it means boosted engagement and more money for the moron whose dumb take people are mocking.

Trust me. Tucker loves that his Russian propaganda is pissing people off. Every angry response should be accompanied by the sounds of a cash register chiming — ca-ching-ca-ching-ca-ching.

In that sense, Tucker is nothing like Walter Duranty. Duranty was never an engagement whore.

Right now, hating on America while praising Putin is at the center of the so-called “America First” movement.

No, I don’t get it either. But there it is.

Duranty echoed Soviet propaganda so he could maintain his connection to the Kremlin.

Tucker, on the other hand, is a craven opportunist, happily burping out pro-Russia propaganda to the hoodwinked masses for cold, hard cash.

He’s not a newsman.

He’s not a journalist.

He’s not interested in good-faith debate.

And he sure as hell is not a truth-teller.

Tucker is a greedy little worm willing to play the Useful Idiot for an American adversary if it boosts his engagement.

The way to stop this kind of low-brow garbage is to ignore it. Block the son of a bitch. Don’t engage. Let him bray his stupidity into the void.