Hillary Clinton Made It Crystal Clear Why She Can't Stand Tucker Carlson
Tucker Carlson's February 2024 interview with Vladimir Putin raised a lot of eyebrows, but one person who wasn't particularly shocked by it was Hillary Clinton. In fact, speaking to MSNBC, the politician started off by saying that the interview really only confirmed something for her. "It shows me what I think we've all known: he's what's called a useful idiot," she quipped. Yikes.
Clinton's comments on Carlson's credibility came while the former Fox News host geared up for his interview with the Russian president — and she didn't stop at just one crack. Far from it; she went on to call him out repeatedly throughout her sit-down with MSNBC's Alex Wagner. Included in her battery of criticisms was a claim that Russian media houses didn't even take him seriously, and that based on the translations she'd seen, he tended to be framed as a joke. Clinton didn't name the specific outlets she was referring to.
Clinton's clapbacks weren't only limited to Carlson's Putin interview, though. She also made a number of references to his track record as a journalist over the years, noting more than once that he'd been dismissed from various jobs. It's fairly safe to say, then, that she's long disliked both him and his contributions to journalism.
Hillary and Tucker had a run-in back in 2003
That Hillary Clinton isn't a fan of Tucker Carlson isn't exactly news. In fact, she called him out long before his interview with Vladimir Putin. However, on that particular occasion, back in 2003, the tension ended with the two joking about it in a live broadcast of CNN's "Crossfire," where Carlson was a co-host at the time.
The tension began when Clinton was promoting her autobiography, "Living History." As demonstrated in a series of flashbacks by CNN, Carlson had made a number of shady comments on the air about how unpopular he thought the book would be, and even promised to eat his shoe if a million copies sold. Unfortunately for the overconfident co-anchor, Clinton did indeed reach that target in the space of a month, and was teased about it on air by his co-host Paul Begala. Enter Clinton herself, walking onto the set with a giant, shoe-shaped cake. Not just any shoe-shaped cake, mind you. As she joked on the set, "I really want you to notice, Tucker, that this is a wingtip ... it's a right wingtip."
Both Carlson and Clinton appeared to be good sports over the situation, with the former thanking the then-senator for the gesture, and the latter telling him that she thought the cake was all he needed as his, ahem, just desserts (via CNN). However, that one light moment hardly prevented further animosity between them.
Hillary isn't a fan of Tucker's stance on Putin
Even with the niceties exchanged between Tucker Carlson and Hillary Clinton in 2003, they hardly became besties after that. In fact, over the years, Carlson has been one of Clinton's biggest detractors, and during his time on Fox News, he made it very clear that he was not a supporter of the 2016 presidential hopeful. However, what seems to have irked the former secretary of state most in more recent years has been Carlson's support for Vladimir Putin. She pointed to that in her MSNBC interview, telling Alex Wagner that she felt he had become a mouthpiece for the Russian head of state. She even joked that he may score a job with a Russian media house for that very reason.
As for Carlson himself, in an interview at the World Governments Summit, he shared that his goal was merely to hear Putin's side of the argument, for the sake of getting it out there. And, in response to learning of Clinton's take, he appeared unbothered. In fact, he shrugged at hearing it. Carlson also shared that he hadn't actually heard it until his interviewer brought it up. "She's a child, I don't listen to her. How's Libya doing?" he quipped (via Firstpost). Solid way to prove his own maturity, but we digress.
Something tells us we won't be seeing these two chuckle it out on a talk show again anytime soon.