Fox News’ lead host Tucker Carlson is behaving like the discredited appeasers of Adolf Hitler in the prelude to World War II.
The lesson of 1930s appeasement is that it does not work, does not gain peace, and leads to even greater tragedy.
Today, Carlson is making excuses for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and his increasing threats against Ukraine.
Carlson even makes the fantastical claim that NATO has “tormented” Putin. He implies the North Atlantic alliance bears responsibility for a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In a recent op-ed on Newsmax, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark took Tucker to task for his views, noting that “one would think a Fox News host would applaud and champion the pro-American Ukrainians.”
Clark added: “Carlson has praised Putin before, and said that ‘for all his faults, [he] does not hate America ...’”
Carlson’s defense of Putin echoes the famous comment of the Britain’s great appeaser of the Nazis, Philip Kerr, the country’s ambassador to the United States later known as Lord Lothian.
Lothian defended Hitler’s march into the Rhineland in 1936, a blatant violation of the Treaty of Versailles.
He said the move amounted to nothing more than the Germans marching into “their own back garden.”
At the time, Lothian served as Britain’s ambassador to the United States, and his defense of Hitler’s actions did much to bolster the German position at the time.
Ukraine is not anybody’s “back garden,” certainly not Russia’s.
It is the home to 44 million freedom-loving people who have suffered greatly to fight against Russian imperialism.
In 2005, I worked as a consultant to Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” that overturned the fraudulent Russian-engineered election in Ukraine.
The people of Ukraine rose up and put pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko in office as their president.
The Orange revolutionaries huddled and froze in Kiev’s main square during months protests through a cold winter.
This happened as Russia threatened to cut gas supplies for Ukraine unless it kowtowed to its puppet candidate.
What people need to understand, which Carlson may not, is that Putin wants control over Ukraine to cement Russia’s role as a great European power.
Russia’s population has dwindled to about 145 million, lower than when Putin came to power in 2000, and the country desperately wants to re-annex Ukraine to assert its continental role as a “superpower.”
It also wants to rekindle its control over the so-called satellite nations of East Europe it dominated during the Soviet days.
Russia’s only access to these nations is though Poland and Ukraine.
Poland has been admitted to NATO, posing a major problem for Russia.
Now, Ukraine is seeking such membership, and Carlson argues that its application is “tormenting” Putin.
So, mark Tucker Carlson down as an appeaser in the most important battle for freedom now going on in the world.
Dick Morris is a former presidential adviser and political strategist. He is a regular contributor to Newsmax TV. Read Dick Morris' Reports — More Here.
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