‘Tucker the Untouchable’ goes soft on Putin but remains Fox News’s biggest power

Primetime host rejects suggestion he is pushing pro-Putin rhetoric - and he's still hugely popular with viewers

Last week, two Fox News journalists died in Ukraine, and the news channel grieved along with the rest of the country amid anger at the Russian onslaught. Republicans, too, rapidly shed past views on Russia and some called for no-fly zones and supplying Ukraine with Polish MiG fighter jets as Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion ground on.

But the far-right Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the alternately flabbergasted and outraged primetime host and Trumpist standard-bearer, carried on presenting his conspiratorial show with such a seeming lack of regard that the Kremlin itself reportedly considers his equivocations over the causes of the conflict vital to its propaganda apparatus.