- Tucker Carlson said Vladimir Putin was “a couple hours late” for their Kremlin interview this week.
- Making people wait is a power move often used by the Russian president.
- Putin launched into a lengthy revisionist history of Russia that Carlson said “annoyed” him.
Russian President Vladimir Putin pulled a power move on Tucker Carlson that set the stage for the former Fox News host getting steamrolled.
In a post-interview reaction clip, Carlson said Putin was “a couple hours late” for his two-hour interview with the Russian leader in the Kremlin this week.
Making people wait is a tactic Putin has regularly used as a power play to show dominance over his guests, including world leaders.
Putin had former President Donald Trump wait for an hour before a summit in Helsinki in 2018.
He was about 50 minutes behind schedule for a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2015, Reuters reported.
And he also held German Chancellor Angela Merkel waiting for more than four hours at a private lunch in 2014, Radio Free Europe reported.
I suspect he has people watching to let him know if someone is about to leave, or hasn’t arrived. Those people likely also run interference if someone is getting up to leave, promising it’ll be just another few minutes.