Tucker Carlson is not an idiot. He comes from a wealthy family, finished college, has traveled abroad and is a highly successful media commentator. Why, then, would he allow himself to be treated like a stooge for Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, by giving him a platform to deceive Americans?

Carlson recently interviewed Putin in Moscow, offering almost no challenge when Putin lied. Carlson should have taken time to study the harm done to America and the world in the last century by the Anglo-American journalist Walter Duranty and his followers on the left.

Some viewed Duranty as one of Joseph Stalin's most useful idiots. But the New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning Moscow correspondent in the 1930s was not a naive idiot like many of his contemporary Western colleagues. He may have liked communism, but he was primarily a cynic who lied for Stalin in exchange for an extravagant lifestyle in Moscow, facilitated by the Soviet secret police, public attention and high status among liberal newspaper readers in the West.

Tucker Carlson, for reasons known only to him, in a similar way allowed himself to be used by Putin, the former KGB spy who learned his propaganda craft from men who served under Stalin.

Why would Carlson and other conservatives now make the same mistakes that fellow travelers on the far left made when they sided with the ruthless communist dictator who killed millions of people? Actions have consequences. For example, absent the efforts of Duranty and others, would Stalin have........

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