Tucker Carlson has asserted that Boris Johnson requested a payment of one million dollars in exchange for an interview, following the former British prime minister’s accusation that the American journalist was a “stooge” for interviewing Vladimir Putin.
During a conversation with Glenn Beck of The Blaze, Tucker Carlson made the claim on Tuesday that Boris Johnson’s team had stipulated that they would only agree to an interview if a payment of one million dollars was made.
However, a spokesperson for Boris Johnson has contradicted this sequence of events and emphasized that the $1 million payment would not have been for the politician personally, but rather intended for charitable purposes. Additionally, it has been reported by The Guardian that Johnson withdrew from the interview following the death of Putin critic Alexi Navalny, an incident widely attributed to the Kremlin.
Carlson had said: “Boris Johnson calls me ‘a tool of the Kremlin’ or something … so I was annoyed, so I put in a request for an interview with [Johnson], because he’s constantly denouncing me as a tool of the Kremlin. He says no,” Carlson said.
“I’m getting more annoyed… I know a lot of people who know Boris Johnson. Finally an adviser gets back to me and said, ‘He will talk to you, but it’s going to cost you a million dollars.”
“I said, ‘I just interviewed Vladimir Putin — I’m not defending Putin, but [he] didn’t ask me for a million dollars. So you’re telling me that Boris Johnson is a lot sleazier, a lot lower than Vladimir Putin’.”
Following his huge interview with Vladimir Putin, Johnson branded Carlson a “stooge of the tyrant, the dictaphone to the dictator and a traitor to journalism” and claimed that the interview was “straight out of Hitler’s playbook”.
Tucker then subsequently exposed the cowardice of Johnson when speaking to The Blaze’s Glenn Beck:
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
