Tucker Carlson said Tuesday that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a staunch supporter of Ukraine’s defense against Russian invasion, agreed to an interview with the former Fox News host about it – for the price of $1 million.
Carlson gave his first interview following his trip to Russia – and controversial interview with President Vladimir Putin – to Glenn Beck on BlazeTV+, denying that he supports the authoritarian regime. At the same time, Carlson called Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion a “shakedown” and a “money laundering scheme,” and accused Johnson of being one of its many profiteers.
“So I’m over in Moscow, I’m waiting to do this interview, it gets out that we’re doing it, and I’m immediately denounced by this guy called Boris Johnson,” Carlson said. “And Boris Johnson calls me ‘a tool of the Kremlin’ or something … so I put in a request for an interview with [Johnson], because he’s constantly denouncing me.”
Carlson said the answer had always been no – but since he’s friends with many people who know the Brexit architect, he reached out to double down on his request after returning from his trip to Moscow.
“Finally an adviser gets back to me and said, ‘He will talk to you, but it’s going to cost you a million dollars.’ He wants a million in U.S. dollars, gold or bitcoin – this just happened yesterday or two days ago!” Carlson said to an audibly incredulous Beck. “Then he will explain his position on Ukraine. So he attacks me without explaining how I’m wrong, of course, or how he’s right – this is the guy, by the way, who at the request of the U.S. government, stopped the peace deal in Ukraine a year and a half ago, and is for that reason responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.”
As Beck guffawed, Carlson said he couldn’t believe it either.
“I said, ‘I just interviewed Vladimir Putin – I’m not defending Putin, but [he] didn’t ask me for a million dollars!’ So you’re telling me that Boris Johnson is a lot sleazier, a lot lower than Vladimir Putin. So this whole thing is a freaking shakedown.”
By “this whole thing,” Tucker seemed to mean Western support for Ukraine’s defense against the invasion – as he went on to question the merit of further spending.
“Why $60 billion dollars? [It’s] not going to allow Ukraine to prevail over Russia. No honest person thinks that’s gonna work,” Carlson said. “This is a money laundering operation, a lot of people involved are making money off of it, and if you’re making money off of war, you can deal with God on that. Because that’s really immoral. Like that’s actually really, really wrong. And a lot of people are, including Boris Johnson.”
A message sent Tuesday to the office of the current prime minister was not immediately returned.
Watch the entire exchange in the embedded video above, and more of Carlson’s interview with Beck below:
