Tucker Carlson Wonders Why the U.S. Would Side With Ukraine’s Fledgling Democracy Against Putin’s Russia

Tucker Carlson on Monday questioned the rationale behind the U.S. pledging to support Ukraine as the Eastern European nation faces the threat of a Russian invasion.

“Why is it disloyal to side with Russia but loyal to side with Ukraine?” Carlson asked. “They’re both foreign countries that don’t care anything about the United States. Kind of strange.”

Carlson’s comments came as Russia has steadily massed troops on Ukraine’s border over the last few months. The latest assessment by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry estimates that there are 127,000 Russian troops in the region. In response, up to 8,500 U.S. troops have been put on heightened alert for a possible deployment, the Pentagon confirmed Monday, with most of them intended to aid NATO forces.

Such countermeasures are pointless, Carlson argued, because Ukraine, a fledgling democracy, is “strategically irrelevant” to the U.S.

“No rational person could defend a war with Russia over Ukraine,” Carlson said. “Nobody thinks a war like that would make America safer or stronger or more prosperous.”

The Fox News host ticked off the factors he said accounted for the rise in tensions between the U.S. and Russia, a list that notably excluded Russian President Vladimir Putin. Instead, Carlson said, this is about “hubris, stupidity, the damaged psychological makeup of our leaders, [and] massive lobbying campaigns by Ukrainian politicians and American defense contractors.”