According to Tucker Carlson, Boris Johnson allegedly sought a million dollars for an interview after calling the American journalist a “stooge” for speaking with Vladimir Putin.
In an interview with Glenn Beck of The Blaze on Tuesday, Tucker Carlson said that Boris Johnson’s staff had stated they would only give an interview with him if he received a million dollars.
In the meantime, a representative for Boris Johnson refuted the stated sequence of events and stated that the $1 million payment would not have gone to the politician directly but rather to charity. The Guardian notes that Johnson reportedly withdrew from the interview following the widely blamed Kremlin-related death of Putin opponent Alexi Navalny.
“Boris Johnson labels me ‘a tool of the Kremlin’ or whatever,” Carlson had stated. Because he keeps accusing me of being a Kremlin tool, I became irritated and requested an interview with Johnson. “He declines,” Carlson remarked.
Tucker: "Boris Johnson calls me a tool of the Kremlin or something. So I put in a request for an interview with Boris Johnson. Finally one of his advisors gets back to me and says he will talk to you but it's going to cost you a million dollars. He wants a million dollars." pic.twitter.com/Y7qADbx2H4
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) February 20, 2024
“I’m growing angrier… Many individuals that I know are familiar with Boris Johnson. When I finally hear back from an adviser, she tells me, “He will talk to you, but it will cost you a million dollars.”
“I recently had an interview with Vladimir Putin. I’m not trying to justify him, but he didn’t ask me for a million dollars,” I added. You’re telling me that Boris Johnson is far less respectable and sleazier than Vladimir Putin, then.
Johnson, who became the first Western reporter to interview Putin since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, criticized Carlson for being a “stooge of the tyrant and a traitor to journalism” and said that the interview was “straight out of Hitler’s playbook” after his contentious interview with Putin earlier this month.
Putin claimed that Johnson had personally interfered to prevent a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, which may have inspired Boris’s exaggerated response to the interview.
The Russian autocrat said that Johnson’s involvement was crucial in keeping discussions with Zelensky’s senior ally, Davyd Arakhamia, from reaching a consensus in Istanbul in 2022.
“We lost the opportunity when Prime Minister Johnson arrived and [talked] Ukraine out of it.” You did not catch it, though. Putin said to Carlson, “You erred.”
In the past, Arakhamia has maintained that Boris Johnson had no bearing on Ukraine’s decision to end negotiations with Russia since Kiev didn’t believe Moscow would honor its commitments. Johnson has further denied any involvement, labeling the accusations as “complete rubbish and Russian propaganda,” adding that he had just advised Ukraine to “simply fight” and that the UK was “a thousand percent” behind them.
Johnson has continued to support Ukraine and be a leading voice for the deployment of more Western weapons to the conflict since he was forced to resign in 2022 amid the “Partygate” scandals, in which it was discovered that he and other members of his government had violated their own strict lockdown measures by hosting parties within Downing Street while residents were forced to stay in their homes.
Johnson pleaded with Donald Trump, the presumed Republican nominee for president, to “bring his party around” on Ukraine and persuade doubting Republicans to keep funding the proxy war against Russia last month.
As compensation for his assistance, the former British prime minister has seen streets in Ukraine christened in his honor and featured in murals and artworks honoring his commitment to the cause of Kyiv.
Johnson has tried to profit from his position in government in addition to his support for Ukraine. In contrast to his tenure in Downing Street, where it was widely reported that he was having serious financial difficulties, Johnson has made millions of dollars from speaking engagements since leaving office, has secured a lucrative contract to write a column for the Daily Mail, and is slated to join the GB News network as a presenter. OpenDemocracy reports that Johnson earned almost £5 million on his own in the first half-year following his departure from government.
