Of course you interview Putin: The media now opposes freedom of the press. We live in Bizarro World.

Tucker Carlson announced on Twitter that he will be interviewing Vladimir Putin. It will be posted on Twitter.

Carlson explained why: “Here’s why we’re doing it. First, because it is our job. We’re in journalism. Our duty is to inform people.”

He went on for another four minutes but in 20 words, he gave the only explanation that matters. I wish he would drop the imperial first-person.

Among the many replies, Ian Miles Cheong said, “Massive credit to Elon Musk for allowing the video to be posted uncensored. It’ll surely be banned elsewhere.”

Alex Barnicoat tweeted, “Tucker Carlson is about to save us from World War 3 with Russia. The West needs to hear the other side of the story.”

Preventing World War 3? This is why they hate him and why they hate Trump. These idiots want another world war and they really don’t care if America loses.

All evidence points to their desire to lose so they can set up a totalitarian government. The traitors in Washington have emasculated the military and literally cut the balls off generals. They opened the border to allow our enemies in. The traitors welcome Muslim terrorists and Chinese spies. The traitors depleted our military supplies by giving them away to Afghanistan and Ukraine.

You know, FDR never gave away a daggone thing. He made our allies take out loans to pay for the war materiel we sent them.

The traitors oppose giving Putin’s side of the story, as self-servingly ridiculous as it likely will be. Carlson told the Swiss magazine, Die Weltwoche, last fall that the Biden administration prevented him from interviewing Putin.

Carlson said, “I tried to interview Vladimir Putin, and the U.S. government stopped me. By the way, nobody defended me. I don’t think there was anybody in the news media who said, ‘Wait a second. I may not like this guy, but he has a right to interview anyone he wants, and we have a right to hear what Putin says.’

“You’re not allowed to hear Putin’s voice. Because why? There was no vote on it. No one asked me. I’m 54 years old. I’ve paid my taxes and followed the law.”

Nevertheless, Adam Kinzinger of CNN, a former congressman, tweeted, “He is a traitor.”

Not to be outdone, Bill Kristol said, “Perhaps we need a total and complete shutdown of Tucker Carlson re-entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Jim Rutenberg, author of the New York Times’s announcement in August 2016 that it was abandoning objectivity, portrayed Carlson as Putin’s puppet. Sooner or later, everyone will be a Putin puppet in paranoid liberal land.

He wrote, “Upon Mr. Carlson’s cancellation at Fox, Russian outlets attributed it to his ‘fearless’ reporting on Ukraine.”

The only thing fearless about the rest of the American press coverage of the Russian war on Ukraine is blisters from carrying all that water for the CIA.

The NYT’s Kevin D. Williamson also wrote, “On television and online, Russian state media has treated Mr. Carlson like a visiting celebrity, offering a stream of photos and videos of his various stops — at the airport, dining at a restaurant, taking in the Spartacus ballet at the Bolshoi Theater.”

Who is sucking up to who?

Once upon a time, the media supported freedom of the press. In 1937, a 44-year-old Jewish radio reporter from Cleveland went to Berlin to interview Hitler. That was seen as a good thing. She was Dorothy Fuldheim, 5 feet of fury with red hair. She later said, “He carried a riding whip and every so often struck it against his boots. He was the circus trainer and the world was to jump through the hoops at his command.”

It was one of the many highlights of her news career. Her interview of Albert Speer was another:

“Tell me,” I asked him, “why did you plead guilty?”

“Because I was guilty,” he answered. “I closed my eyes to what was happening because my ambition was so great. Hitler gave me the fulfillment of an architect’s dream, carte blanche to rebuild Berlin as I desired. Who would not have paid almost any price for such an opportunity? Then the war came and my dream for a new Berlin was shoved aside and Hitler appointed me czar of all German industries to produce armaments. By then I was too involved to withdraw.”

“But, Herr Speer,” I asked, “couldn’t you smell the dead flesh in the gas chamber, couldn’t you hear the cry of little children, didn’t you know that behind the trim landscaped concentration camps children were being held naked in their mothers’ arms, their clothes neatly piled in great stacks, and shoved into gas chambers? Didn’t you realize that you were using slave labor in your factories pouring out instruments of destruction?”

“No,” he said. “I closed my eyes to all of what was happening because it was too late. I had no choice or I would have also been a victim, too, for Hitler was irrational.”

—From Fuldheim’s prison interview with Hitler’s architect and later munitions czar Albert Speer, excerpted from A Thousand Friends. (“Hitler would have hung me like a carcass on the wall,” she recalled Speer’s telling her, as a guest on the Phil Donahue show in 1984. “And I told him, ‘It would have been a worthy and noble death.’”)

She was not the only reporter unafraid to visit the devil-in-the-flesh for an interview.

In 1966, Playboy talked George Lincoln Rockwell — an overblown American Nazi leader — into an interview. He said don’t send a Jew. Playboy sent Alex Haley instead.

The interview began:

Haley: Before we begin, Commander, I wonder if you’d mind telling me why you’re keeping that pistol there at your elbow, and this armed bodyguard between us.

Rockwell: Just a precaution. You may not be aware of the fact that I have received literally thousands of threats against my life. Most of them are from cranks, but some of them haven’t been; there are bullet holes all over the outside of this building. Just last week, two gallon jugs of flaming gasoline were flung against the house right under my window. I keep this gun within reach and a guard beside me during interviews because I’ve been attacked too many times to take any chances. I haven’t yet been jumped by an impostor, but it wasn’t long ago that 17 guys claiming to be from a university came here to “interview” me; nothing untoward happened, but we later found out they were armed and planned to tear down the flag, burn the joint and beat me up. Only the fact that we were ready for that kind of rough stuff kept it from happening. We’ve never yet had to hurt anybody, but only because I think they all know we’re ready to fight anytime. If you’re who you claim to be, you have nothing to fear.

Haley: I don’t.

Rockwell: Good. Just so we both know where we stand, I’d like to make something else crystal clear before we begin. I’m going to be honest and direct with you. You’re here in your professional capacity; I’m here in my professional capacity. While here, you’ll be treated well—but I see you’re a black interviewer. It’s nothing personal, but I want you to understand that I don’t mix with your kind, and we call your race “niggers.”

Haley: I’ve been called “nigger” many times, Commander, but this is the first time I’m being paid for it.

If that doesn’t make you smile, you have my sympathies on the loss of your sense of humor.

As a nation, we are losing that sense and much, much more.

Putin is evil, as was Hitler. Instead of showing any curiosity about Putin, the American press relentlessly repeats the narrative spun by the CIA and the rest of the government.

Kinzinger is entitled to his opinion but the rest of the press corps should have straightened him out by now.

Business Insider seemed shocked to report, “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene defends the prospect of Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin amid rumors he is in Moscow.”

No one accused Barbara Walters of being a traitor when she interviewed Putin after 9/11.

Walters: Mr. President, you were in your office, and saw on television, the attack on the World Trade Center. What did you think? What did you feel when you saw it?

Putin: I was working at the time. It was a usual working day. But I had very mixed feelings. Above all, first of all, it might seem a little bit strange, but I had the feeling of guilt for this tragedy. You certainly know that we have talked a lot and in very many places about this fact of international terrorism. We have talked about the possible threats to the United States and to other countries. But well, we’re not able to face who, where and how can strike. And this was the first feeling I have: the feeling of anger and to some extent the feeling of guilt.

I should say at the same time that I understood quite well that what the American people and the American leadership felt at that time. Because quite recently, in 1999, we were the victims of a terrorist attack. And I’m not just referring to the Chechnya and the Caucasus. I’m referring to the explosion of residential buildings in Moscow and other cities as a result of which hundreds of innocent people died. So I understood the feelings that the Americans were feeling at that time, so I feel bad.

The way we learn is by reading and asking questions.

Those who don’t want you to ask questions are the real threat.