Tucker Carlson Claims US Ukraine Assistance “Payback” for Alleged Russian Theft of 2016 Presidential Election

US media is report­ing that Fox News super­star Tuck­er Carl­son has claimed that US aid to Ukraine is “pay­back” for Rus­sia alleged­ly steal­ing the 2016 elec­tion from Hillary Clin­ton. Accord­ing to a report in The Wrap:

May 3, 2022 The bal­loon­ing bil­lions in mon­ey and muni­tions the Unit­ed States is send­ing to Ukraine is moti­vat­ed by a Demo­c­rat revenge fan­ta­sy aimed at tak­ing out Vladimir Putin – as pay­back for steal­ing the 2016 elec­tion from Hillary Clin­ton, Tuck­er Carl­son said Mon­day night. The Fox News host laid out the case in his open­ing mono­logue, pep­pered with clips of Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers say­ing that “total vic­to­ry” is the only out­come they seek in the bloody con­flict. Carl­son set out to define what they mean by that, even as the U.S. has already sent around $30 bil­lion to uphold Ukraine’s so-far suc­cess­ful defense.The most-watched per­son on cable news, rou­tine­ly accused of being pro-Putin by left-lean­ing pun­dits, has repeat­ed­ly called Russia’s inva­sion unpro­voked and unjus­ti­fied, voiced sup­port for the Ukrain­ian people’s resis­tance and denounced Moscow’s relent­less attack on civil­ians. But on Mon­day, the “Tuck­er Carl­son Tonight” mono­logue sug­gest­ed there’s at least one less-than-jus­ti­fied moti­va­tion for the staunch sup­port from Washington’s cur­rent major­i­ty par­ty. Carl­son said that when Clin­ton lost to Don­ald Trump in 2016, Democ­rats “imme­di­ate­ly set out to find some­one else to blame … Vladimir Putin got Don­ald Trump elect­ed, they told us. Hillary Clin­ton said that repeat­ed­ly.” “This was a child­ish psy­cho­log­i­cal defense mech­a­nism, it was not a fac­tu­al claim,” he said. “And yet they kept say­ing it. In the face of no evi­dence. And over time they began act­ing on it like it was true. And then over even more time they par­a­lyzed the entire fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for years, fruit­less­ly try­ing to prove the core claims … The Russ­ian gov­ern­ment hacked our election!”

Read the rest here.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) has report­ed exten­sive­ly on Tuck­er Carl­son’s ongo­ing ampli­fi­ca­tion of Russ­ian talk­ing points on Ukraine.