Here’s the most noteworthy snippet from last night’s much longer monologue that’s apparently being rerun on state-backed Russian media.

Tucker: It may be worth asking yourself… why do I hate Putin.. Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? pic.twitter.com/0jlXfS0PYy

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 23, 2022

Carlson is a smart, well-educated guy so I assume the line about Putin having never called him a racist is a deliberate echo of Muhammad Ali’s famous (and possibly apocryphal) remark about the Viet Cong. Tucker would doubtless get a kick about turning the logic of leftist conscientious objection during Vietnam around on Democrats.

But if you take that logic seriously, there are precious few foreign regimes Americans should have any issue with. In the clip Carlson seems to carve out an exception for China because of its role in the pandemic but virtually every other U.S. antagonist would presumably get a pass. Kim Jong Un has never called me a racist either, for instance. He’s merely built nuclear bombs which he might use someday to try to kill me. Same with Xi Jinping.

Same with Putin, come to think of it.

Adam Kinzinger summarized the clip above this way: “In 35 seconds here, Tucker Carlson basically said: ‘Putin isn’t your enemy. Your fellow American is.'” Right, that’s part of the nationalist project. The important struggle is the one between competing tribes to decide which should dominate the nation. All else is a distraction. But apologizing for Putin has another goal: It aims to get Americans to question their instinct that they should feel more sympathy for a liberal democracy than for a fascist regime. Why should we prefer Zelensky to Putin?

Relatedly, why should we prefer to be governed by an addled leftist like Joe Biden just because he won an election? Why shouldn’t we prefer to have an authoritarian government seize power if it’s committed to advancing the right’s interests?

After watching this clip last night, Michael Weiss tweeted, “What’s tragicomic here, although I doubt Carlson understands or even cares why, is that Putin and his war party would point to this as evidence that the West is indeed in terminal decline in a manner worthy of Gibbon. More encouragement for why they should press on.” I give Tucker more credit than Weiss does. I think he does understand that, and would share that opinion. The sooner the public is convinced that classical liberalism, a.k.a. “the west,” is in decline, the more agreeable they’ll be if and when an illiberal successor comes to power.

Will Saletan notes that Carlson also can’t resist spinning resistance to Putin with accusations of venality among western leaders, a rich irony given that Russia is one of the most notorious kleptocracies on Earth. There’s a straightforward but unsexy explanation for why Putin spooks western leaders: They spent most of the second half of the previous century straining to contain Russian expansionism, believed the threat had finally passed, and are now discovering that it hasn’t. In Tucker’s telling, though, this conflict is all about graft — among the west, not among the tsar, of course.

In his monologue and in a follow-up interview with former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Carlson promoted the slander—often featured in Russian state propaganda—that when American politicians talk about defending freedom or democracy, they’re really just serving their own commercial interests. He offered two explanations for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine: corrupt financial ties between Ukraine and President Joe Biden and a secret plot to drive up energy prices. “Maybe expensive energy would be good for the many renewable deals their friends and donors are invested in,” he speculated—the “they” referring to Biden and other Democrats. In the interview with Gabbard, Carlson nodded along—“Right,” he interjected—as Gabbard accused the American “power elite” of betraying both “the American people” and “the Russian people.”…

Carlson doesn’t just oppose military intervention or aid to stop the Russian invasion. (No one is proposing U.S. troop deployments inside Ukraine anyway.) He also opposes the most plausible nonviolent alternative: economic sanctions. In his monologue, delivered hours after Germany halted approval of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, he asked “why you would ever want to shut down any energy pipeline anywhere, ever,” since this would raise costs for Americans. He also condemned the Biden administration for “picking a fight with Europe’s biggest gas supplier” (that would be Russia). Later, when Gabbard complained that sanctions against Russia would just “increase suffering and hardship for the American people,” Carlson agreed.

The Cold War made the world an exceptionally dangerous place for a long time. NATO mobilizing to punish Putin during his first major step towards restarting it might deter Russia from pressing its luck. You don’t need a conspiracy theory to explain why it makes sense to raise the costs of expanding west on an autocrat who’s openly wistful about the end of the Russian empire.

Probably the ugliest line from Carlson’s longer spiel, though, was “Alexander Vindman believes you have a moral obligation to defend his homeland,” a dig at the former Trump aide and whistleblower who made the case for supporting Ukraine recently on MSNBC. Vindman was born in Ukraine, it’s true. But he arrived in the U.S. when he was three years old, grew up in Brooklyn, and served many years in the U.S. military. Because he’s anti-Trump — and anti-Putin — Tucker evidently felt obliged to deny him his due as an American by labeling Ukraine his “homeland” instead. No matter how many sacrifices he’s made for the United States.

I’ll leave you with this. Nationalists may believe that Putin’s designs on Ukraine are more legitimate than China’s designs on Taiwan, but not everyone agrees. Like, for instance, Taiwan.

Taiwan condemns Russia’s infringement on Ukrainian sovereignty & encourages all parties involved to resolve their disputes rationally & peacefully. Meanwhile, we will take steps to bolster our military readiness & counter cognitive warfare while ensuring economic stability. pic.twitter.com/iZJC5TQlc0

— 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen (@iingwen) February 23, 2022