Alex Wagner Asks Hayes if She’s Allowed to Say Tucker Carlson’s Name on Air

HAYES: “I, mean she has better odds on it. She thinks it’s going to pass in the way that I’m not — “
WAGNER: “Yes. And, look, she’s a former senator. We talk about her, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate. She logged her time in the Senate and understands the dynamics in a way that perhaps you and I don’t, is more optimistic, I think, about the goodness of at least the Upper Chamber. But when you saw what you saw yesterday unfold on the House floor, it’s really hard to imagine how, you know, the adults in the room take charge of the gavel once again.”
HAYES: “You also asked her about Vladimir Putin giving an interview to, like, an online video guy? Which — you know, an American dude who went there to basically tell him how awesome he was.”
WAGNER: “He’s kind of going rogue in Moscow.
HAYES: “And she — you know, like, her views on Putin have been clear for a long time, and her views on this blogger going to do the interview are also pretty clear.”
WAGNER: “Yes. Am I allowed to say his name?”
HAYES: “Yes. Yes, I’m just — “
WAGNER: “His name is Tucker Carlson, and he is the only American ‘journalist’ who has been able to interview Putin since the invasion in 2022. And again, we’ll be talking about this later at 9:00 P.M., but she calls him a useful idiot. Not paraphrasing. Quoting Lenin, that he’s effectively a tool of — Tucker Carlson is a tool of Vladimir Putin, a mouthpiece for Kremlin propaganda. And it’s honestly hard to debate her on that, right? If you look at what Tucker Carlson has been doing with Viktor Orban, with Vladimir Putin, just on a strongman tour of the globe — but this is why, Chris, you know, there is a line to be drawn between Tucker Carlson interviewing Vladimir Putin and the resistance in the Republican Party to pass this Ukraine aid.”
HAYES: “Oh, absolutely. He’s doing it for that reason.”
WAGNER: “Yes. And either they’re useful idiots and they don’t realize that, or it’s something more craven than that.”
HAYES: “By the way, my favorite part of that, the detail that was in, he was telling everyone he was the first person to even try to interview Putin, which is — Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was like, ‘No, we get requests all the time. We decline them.’”
WAGNER: “‘We usually lock them up in jail.’”
HAYES: “‘We said yes to you because you are no danger and you’re a propagandist.’ He didn’t actually say this. Whereas the other ones, we’ve got a Wall Street Journal Reporter in prison right now. I didn’t get to say this to Chris Murphy, but I’m gonna ask you because you’re sitting here and you talked about this — “
WAGNER: “Because we look a lot alike.”
HAYES: “Also because she’s so bullish, which is like — the thing I don’t get about this idea that the Ukraine aid is gonna pass is, like, isn’t Trump just gonna whip against that to?”
WAGNER: “Yes.”
HAYES: “Like, why is — this idea that everyone is so surprised he came out against the border deal, it’s like, okay, we’re not that surprised. But now we’re gonna go pass the Ukraine aid? I’m like, guys — “
WAGNER: “And didn’t even try to cover his tracks. Do you know what I mean? The expressive nature of the fealty is so — it’s so brazen. He literally is Truth Social-ing, ‘Don’t pass this,’ and Mitch McConnell literally says, ‘We can’t pass it because Donald Trump basically doesn’t want us to pass it in an election year.’ Nobody even tries to pretend otherwise. But to your point, I mean, you would argue, like, he has as much vested in an ongoing kind of conflagration in Ukraine as he does with chaos on the border. So why wouldn’t Trump stop anything from being done about it?”
HAYES: “Yeah, the guy who helped get him elected the first time, like — yes, obviously they’re all loyal to Trump and whatever, but the quickness — “
WAGNER: “They’re also loyal to Putin.”
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