Tucker Carlson calls Ukraine’s Jewish leader ‘rat-like’ as he launches new Twitter show with pro-Kremlin rant

Tucker Carlson described Ukraine’s Jewish leader as “rat-like”, questioned the official story about 9/11, and claimed definitively that aliens are visiting Earth as he launched his new TV show on Twitter.

The far-right former Fox News anchor opened the next act of his career with a pro-Kremlin rant claiming that it was “obvious” Ukrainian forces were responsible for the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on Tuesday.

He referred to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as “sweaty and rat-like”, “a persecutor of Christians”, and in bed with American investment bankers.

Both Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for the destruction of the dam, which lies within Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine and supplies water to a large area of the country. Western intelligence agencies have said they are not sure who was responsible.

Carlson, however, who was taken off the air by Fox News this April, hewed strongly towards the Russian line on the incident, while accusing US senator Lindsey Graham of being “aroused” by the killing of Russian troops.

“No one who's paid to cover these things seem to entertain even the possibility it could have been Ukrainians who did it. No chance of that,” said Carlson in his Twitter video on Tuesday, engaging in his trademark deadpan sarcasim.

“Ukraine, as you may have heard, is led by a man called Zelensky. We can say for a dead certain fact that he was not involved. He couldn't have been; Zelensky is too decent for terrorism.

“Now you see him on television, and it’s true you might form a different impression. Sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of [US investment giant] BlackRock.”

“But don't believe your own eyes. Actually, Mr Zelensky is a very good man... of all the people in the world, our shifty, dead-eyed Ukrainian friend in the tracksuit is uniquely incapable of blowing up a damn. He's literally a living saint, a man in whom there is no sin.”

He went on to cite numerous other examples where, he claimed, the US media had ignored important stories as part of an effort to systematically deceive the American people.

“What's happened to the hundreds of billions of US dollars we've sent to Ukraine? No clue,” he said. “Who organised those Black Lives Matter riots three years ago? No one's gotten to the bottom of that. What exactly happened on 9/11? Well, it's still classified.”

He then talked about bombshell claims from a US military intelligence veteran named David Grusch that the US government has recovered pieces of spacecraft built by “non-human species”, as well as the bodies of alien pilots.

Although the story was widely covered by US media outlets, Carlson focused on the fact that neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post had reported on it, and treated Mr Grusch’s claims as definitively true.

“That's what the former Intel officer revealed, and it was clear he was telling the truth,” Mr Carlson said. “In other words, UFOs are actually real, and apparently so is extraterrestrial life.

“Now, in a normal country, this news would qualify as a bombshell the story of the millennium. But in our country, it doesn't.”

Carlson was removed from his nightly show on Fox News where he had been the right-wing broadcaster’s provocatuer-in-chief for years. His dismissal came in the wake of the Dominion scandal, which saw Fox pay out $787m for deliberately spreading Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims that he had been cheated out of victory in the 2020 election.

Text messages from star presenters on the channel – including Carlson – revealed that many staff knew Mr Trump’s claims were false but were spreading them anyway in the interests of maintaining viewers. Carlson’s texts also revealed he believed the one-term president was “demonic” and that he “hated” him.

Last month Elon Musk said he had secured Carlson for a new show on Twitter, of which Tuesday’s broadcast was the first edition.

After it was released on the social media platform, Mr Musk retweeted the 10.27 minute video with the comment: “Would be great to have shows from all parts of the political spectrum on this platform!”