I dont think he was simply trying to be controversial, rather consistent. Tucker seems to be from the viewpoint of America 1ST, everything else is a distant second.
In fact, I would say his comment was not so controversial in 2019. Today of course, AFTER Russia has decided to carry on "diplomacy by other means" and has led a full scale invasion, our interests can be well perceived to align differently.
That's fair and IF the 2019 comment was STANDING ALONE I might agree with you.
But just prior to the invasion he was arguing in favor of Putin's logic.
(Above from Vanity Fair, but accurate as I've seen video of all of them).
Then this:
At least four times this week, Russian news reports have featured translated clips of Tucker Carlson or his guest
Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic U.S. representative…. At 8 p.m. on Sunday, a primetime review of the week’s news presented by
Dmitry Kiselev, a bombastic Putin favorite, featured remarks from the opening monologue of Carlson’s February 17 show, in which the American commentator trashed Ukraine’s government.
An hour later, the evening news program on Russia’s main state television channel used a longer excerpt from the same Carlson monologue and shaped its own report to amplify the Fox News host’s attack on a Democrat. In the original Fox News broadcast, Carlson had suggested that Sen.
Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who worked to arm Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missiles, was only doing so because of donations from American defense contractors like Raytheon.
On Wednesday night, just hours before Putin ordered the attack on Ukraine to begin, two excerpts from Carlson’s most recent program were featured in Russian state television’s 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. news broadcasts…. Carlson’s comments were so welcome in Moscow that an excerpt from that rant with Russian subtitles was quickly produced by the Russian-language service of RT, the government-funded network formerly known as Russia Today.
Consider this:
“Kamala Harris encouraged Ukraine to become a member of NATO. Quote, ‘I appreciate and admire President Zelenskyy’s desire to join NATO,’” Carlson began, selectively quoting one sentence from the vice president’s lengthy
remarks at a news conference in Munich, Germany, on Feb. 20.
“Message: Up yours, Vladimir Putin, go ahead and invade Ukraine,” Carlson continued. “And, of course, Vladimir Putin did that just days later. So the invasion was no surprise to the Biden administration. They knew that would happen. That was the point of the exercise.
“We watched all this happen, we missed it. How? Honestly because it was insane and therefore very hard to take seriously. Why in the world would the United States intentionally seek war with Russia? How could we possibly benefit from that war? We still don’t know the answer to that question.”
