As China woes mount, investment banks brace for more Asia job cuts

Fri, February 9, 2024 

An evening view of the financial Central district and Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong

By Kane Wu and Selena Li

HONG KONG (Reuters) -Job cuts at Western investment banks in Asia are expected to increase this year as revenue pressures rise due to deepening economic and market turmoil in China, even as deal prospects brighten in Japan and India, headhunters and bankers said.

A new round of staff cuts that began in late 2023 on the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, key regional investment banking hubs, will gather pace in the coming months, they added.

U.S. boutique bank Lazard announced internally last month it would close its Beijing office, resulting in some employees being laid off, while others were to be relocated to Hong Kong, two people with knowledge of the move said.

Its European peer Rothschild disbanded its Shanghai-based team in the fourth quarter, two separate people with knowledge of the matter said. Bank of America last month announced job cuts of more than 20 bankers in Asia.

The sources declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak to the media.

Lazard and Rothschild declined to comment.

China's stock markets hovering around five-year lows and the country's weaker-than-expected recovery from the pandemic have deepened investor worries and soured companies' domestic demand outlook. Geopolitical tensions have also driven foreign investors away.

"If the deal flow continues the way it has been in 2023, the market could expect some more cuts," said Sid Sibal, vice president Greater China and head of Hong Kong, at recruitment firm Hudson.

CHINA DEALS

Financial institutions on average have cut roughly 20% of their workforce in Asia last year - with some reductions hitting the highest level since the 2008 financial crisis, Sibal said.

More than 400 investment bankers lost their jobs in Hong Kong alone, most of them focused on China deals, said two investment banking headhunters, who declined to be identified as they are not authorised to speak to the media.

"I don't think western investors will come back to look at China deals soon," said a regional investment banking head at a large European bank who also declined to be named for the same reason.

Global investment banks' income from equities business generated from Chinese clients slumped to $4 billion in 2023, 30% lower than 2022, and M&A posted a 16% fall to $629 million last year, according to data from LSEG.

Overall, investment banking fees collected by global banks in the Asia Pacific dropped 25% in 2023 from a recent peak of $40.6 billion in 2021, LSEG data showed.

UBS is planning headcount cuts in the coming months as the Swiss investment bank's China-focused bankers swelled after it took over Credit Suisse, two sources with knowledge of its plans said.

UBS declined to comment.

'EPISODIC ACTIVITY'

To cushion the impact of China's slowdown, bankers are hoping a promising deals pipeline from India to Japan will make bigger contributions to Asian revenue. They cautioned, however, that fee income growth would remain challenging in the near term.

"Most other Asian markets are too small or episodic in activity," said Craig Coben, a former Bank of America senior banker in Asia and now a managing director at financial expert witness firm Seda Experts.

"Japan has depth as a developed market, but in most years Greater China revenues have dwarfed Japan by several times. India is growing fast, but fee spreads are tight and it's not close to replacing China."

Rahul Saraf, head of India investment banking at Citigroup, estimates India revenue will grow between 15% and 25% for the industry, with a number of prospective multibillion-dollar transactions boosting the outlook.

"All banks will add resources to India but I don't think there is a shift from China to India or Korea to India."

(Reporting by Selena Li and Kane Wu in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Scott Murdoch in Sydney，Roxanne Liu in Beijing, Sinead Cruise in London and Lananh Nguyen in New York; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Jacqueline Wong)

Western media outlets have tried to interview Putin, contrary to Carlson claim | Fact check

Gabrielle Settles, USA TODAY
Thu, February 8, 2024


The claim: No Western journalists have reached out to interview Putin

Former Fox News host and conservative pundit Tucker Carlson announced Feb. 6 (direct link, archive link) that he was going to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming along the way that no one else has bothered to do so.

Carlson talked about the Russia-Ukraine war and criticized media outlets from “English-speaking countries” for interviewing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in what Carlson called “fawning pep sessions.” Then he levied a claim about Western media.

“Not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict, Vladimir Putin,” Carlson says.

His announcement was reposted more than 165,000 times on X and shared on Facebook more than 10,000 times.

The interview is set to air on Carlson's media network on Feb. 8 at 6 p.m. Eastern.

More from the Fact-Check Team: How we pick and research claims | Email newsletter | Facebook page

Our rating: False

The Kremlin and journalists from multiple outlets have refuted Carlson’s claim. Western media organizations have reached out many times for an interview with Putin, but the interviews weren't granted.
Carlson is among other Western journalists requesting an interview

CNN anchor and journalist Christiane Amanpour took to X to refute Carlson in a Feb. 6 post of her own.

“Does Tucker really think we journalists haven't been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full scale invasion of Ukraine?” she wrote on Feb. 6. “It's absurd – we'll continue to ask for an interview, just as we have for years now.”

BBC News Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg also chimed in with an X post.

“Interesting to hear Tucker Carlson claim that ‘no western journalist has bothered to interview’ Putin since the invasion of Ukraine," he wrote. "We’ve lodged several requests with the Kremlin in the last 18 months. Always a ‘no’ for us."

The Associated Press noted in a story it is also among the outlets that have sought to interview Putin.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary, confirmed that other outlets have reached out since the start of the war, according to reports from Russian and international media groups.

“No, Mr. Carlson is wrong. In fact, he cannot know this,” Peskov told reporters on Feb. 7. “We receive many requests for interviews with the president, but mainly, when it concerns the countries of the collective West, we are talking about large online media: traditional TV channels, large newspapers, which cannot boast of attempts to at least look impartial in terms of covering what is happening.”

Fact check: Omar spoke about Horn of Africa port deal, not loyalty to Somalia over US

Peskov said Carlson was chosen for the interview because “he has a position that differs” from other English-language media.

USA TODAY reached out to Carlson for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Our fact-check sources:

Christiane Amanpour, Feb. 6, X post


Steve Rosenberg, Feb. 6, X post


Interfax News, Feb. 7, The Kremlin confirmed that Putin gave an interview to American journalist Carlson


Associated Press, Feb. 7, Russia says former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has interviewed Vladimir Putin

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here.

USA TODAY is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisanship, fairness and transparency. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Meta.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tucker Carlson wrong about Western media ignoring Putin | Fact check





Fact Check: Putin's Interview with Tucker Carlson Allegedly Included a Threat of War with the US. Here Are the Facts

Jack Izzo
Fri, February 9, 2024 



Claim:

In an interview with Tucker Carlson in February 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened the United States with war.

Rating:

Rating: False

On Feb. 6, 2024, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson sat down for an interview with Vladimir Putin. It was the president of Russia's first interview with an American since Russia's attempted invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Carlson's independent streaming service, Tucker Carlson Network, aired the interview and uploaded it to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, on Feb. 8, 2024.

The interview took about two hours, so news organizations and social media users alike spread clips and soundbites in their coverage of the event. One post on X showed a screenshot of a news article from The New Zealand Herald that read "'Serious global conflict': Putin threatens US with war in Tucker Carlson interview." The user claimed that Putin never said that during the interview.


We found no evidence Putin made such a direct threat either, so we rate this claim as "False."

To check the claim, Snopes first investigated whether the headline was real. We found the headline on the front page of The New Zealand Herald, as shown in the X post. However, clicking on the link to read the story revealed a different, less provocative headline: "Former Fox host Tucker Carlson releases interview with Vladimir Putin on social media." Put simply, the more dramatic headline was found only on the site's front page, as if the headline's sole purpose was to draw more attention to the article.

Next, we checked the interview itself to see whether we could identify any points where Putin could have been interpreted as threatening war with the United States. We took an English-language transcript of the interview released by the Kremlin and cross-referenced it with the version of the interview posted to Carlson's X account.

In an ideal world, Snopes would have independently translated the interview to avoid using the Russian government as a primary source. However, because the interview was intended for an English-speaking audience, Putin's replies were translated and overdubbed in English, preventing us from hearing the original Russian. The Kremlin transcript closely matched the dubbed translation provided in the video, but Snopes could not independently verify the exact words Putin used.

With that said, neither the video nor the written evidence supported the claim that Putin threatened war. The following excerpt, which begins around 1:07:00 and lasts until 1:11:35 in the video posted to X, is the clip we found most closely resembling the claim.

Tucker Carlson: Do you think NATO was worried about this becoming a global war or nuclear conflict?

Vladimir Putin: At least that's what they're talking about. And they are trying to intimidate their own population with an imaginary Russian threat. This is an obvious fact. And thinking people, not philistines, but thinking people, analysts, those who are engaged in real politics, just smart people understand perfectly well that this is a fake. They are trying to fuel the Russian threat.

Tucker Carlson: The threat I think you were referring to is Russian invasion of Poland, Latvia — expansionist behavior. Can you imagine a scenario where you send Russian troops to Poland?

Vladimir Putin: Only in one case: if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don't have any interest. Its just threat mongering.

Tucker Carlson: Well, the argument, I know you know this, is that, well, he invaded Ukraine — he has territorial aims across the continent. And you are saying unequivocally, you don’t?

Vladimir Putin: It is absolutely out of the question. You just don't have to be any kind of analyst, it goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of global war. And a global war will bring all of humanity to the brink of destruction. It's obvious.

There are, certainly, means of deterrence. They have been scaring everyone with us all along: tomorrow Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons, tomorrow Russia will use that, no, the day after tomorrow. So what? These are just horror stories for people in the street in order to extort additional money from US taxpayers and European taxpayers in the confrontation with Russia in the Ukrainian theatre of war. The goal is to weaken Russia as much as possible.

Tucker Carlson: One of our senior United States senators from the State of New York, Chuck Schumer, said yesterday, I believe, that we have to continue to fund the Ukrainian effort or US soldiers, citizens could wind up fighting there. How do you assess that?

Vladimir Putin: This is a provocation, and a cheap provocation at that.

I do not understand why American soldiers should fight in Ukraine. There are mercenaries from the United States there. The biggest number of mercenaries comes from Poland, with mercenaries from the United States in second place, and mercenaries from Georgia in third place. Well, if somebody has the desire to send regular troops, that would certainly bring humanity on the brink of a very serious, global conflict. This is obvious…

In this clip, Putin does mention that sending "regular troops" to Ukraine would "bring humanity [to] the brink of a very serious, global conflict." However, he had just stated that "it goes against common sense to get involved in some kind of global war."

Because those two statements contradict each other, we determine that there was never really an explicit threat of war made against the United States, and thus the claim is not true. Pointing out that neither side truly wants a global war indirectly implies that it would be foolish for the United States to escalate in Ukraine, allowing Putin to continue to threaten retaliation without giving U.S. officials any new information about how he might actually react to an escalation.

Sources:

“Https://Twitter.Com/GeromanAT/Status/1755870696217944330.” X (Formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1755870696217944330. Accessed 9 Feb. 2024.

“Https://Twitter.Com/TuckerCarlson/Status/1755734526678925682.” X (Formerly Twitter), https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1755734526678925682. Accessed 9 Feb. 2024.

“Interview to Tucker Carlson.” President of Russia, 9 Feb. 2024, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/73411.

Ljunggren, David, et al. “Putin Tells Tucker Carlson Russia Has No Interest in Attacking Poland or Latvia.” Reuters, 9 Feb. 2024. www.reuters.com, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rare-us-interview-says-russia-has-no-interest-attacking-poland-or-latvia-2024-02-09/.

Murphy, J. Kim. “Tucker Carlson Shares Controversial Two-Hour Vladimir Putin Interview.” Variety, 9 Feb. 2024, https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/tucker-carlson-vladimir-putin-interview-1235902906/.

“‘Serious Global Conflict’: Putin Threatens US with War in Tucker Carlson Interview.” NZ Herald, 10 Feb. 2024, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/former-fox-host-tucker-carlson-releases-interview-with-vladimir-putin-on-to-social-media/XD27XPXEQFBCFGPPQVEWQ7ODL4/.


Tucker Carlson Releases 2-Hour Interview With Vladimir Putin

Nick Visser
Thu, February 8, 2024



Carlson announced the interview earlier this week amid days of speculation that he had traveled to Moscow. The former Fox News host claimed that “not a single Western journalist” had bothered to speak with Putin but that he was doing so because “Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they’re implicated in.”

The interview immediately sparked condemnation from Democratic lawmakers and other media outlets who cast it as a means for Putin to reach a growing far-right faction in the Republican Party. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) called Carlson a “traitor” while others said the decision to interview Putin was “unbelievable.”

The Kremlin has dramatically cracked down on the Western media’s ability to cover Russia from inside the country, saying news outlets have “stupefied” their readers with propaganda. Despite Carlson’s claims, many major outlets have attempted to speak with the Russian president, but the Kremlin has rebuffed those attempts for years.

 

Russia has also imprisoned Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, for more than 10 months while he awaits trial on charges of espionage. Both the Journal and the U.S. government have flatly rejected the espionage allegations.

Carlson asked about Gershkovich’s detention and if the Kremlin would be willing to release him to his media team to be brought back to the U.S. “as a sign of your decency.”

“We have done so many gestures of goodwill out of decency that I think we have run out of them,” Putin replied, although he appeared open to an unspecified reciprocal swap with the U.S. “We have never seen anyone reciprocate to us in a similar manner. However, in theory, we can say that we do not rule out that we can do that if our partners take reciprocal steps.”

Carlson continued to press for more information before Putin described Gershkovich’s behavior as espionage and said the reporter was “caught red-handed.” He went on to claim, without evidence, that the reporter was “not just a journalist” but someone who had obtained “confidential information.”

“I do not rule out that the person you refer to, Mr. Gershkovich, may return to his motherland,” Putin said. “We are ready to talk. … But we have to come to an agreement.”

The Journal has vehemently rejected any suggestion that Gershkovich was working in any capacity beyond that of a reporter, declaring his imprisonment part of the fierce crackdown on the media since the Ukraine invasion began.

“The concept of a free press ― the underpinning of a free society ― has been singularly challenged,” Emma Tucker, the Journal’s editor in chief, told readers in December. She described the act as an extension of how Putin’s “clampdown on independent media extended to the foreign press.”

Carlson has long been sympathetic to Putin and harshly critical of U.S. funding for Ukraine. Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, said Carlson “contrasts the position of the traditional Anglo-Saxon media” in a statement this week, adding that Russia had “no desire to communicate” with most Western media. Peskov described such outlets as failing to be impartial in their coverage.

Lawmakers in Washington have struggled to pass a new round of funding for the besieged nation this week, which could be included in a massive $95 billion national security bill that also includes support for Israel.

Republicans, however, have increasingly lined up against further aid to Kyiv.

Putin uses Tucker Carlson interview to take shots at Zelenskyy  (AND TRUDEAU)

over Yaroslav Hunka affair 

HUNKA A WW 2 VET OF THE 

UKR NATIONALIST ARMY  (ALIGNED WITH THE NAZI'S)PROMOTED BY UKR NATIONALISTS IN CANADA

CBC
Thu, February 8, 2024 

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson in an interview conducted in Moscow on Tuesday and released on his Tucker Carlson Network website Thursday evening. (Tucker Carlson Network/Reuters - image credit)

Russian President Vladimir Putin used an interview with U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson to take a shot at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for joining in a standing ovation for a veteran of a Second World War Nazi unit during his visit to Canada.

Zelenskyy gave an address to Parliament during the September visit. He was introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and thanked by then-Speaker of the House Anthony Rota.

During his remarks, Rota recognized a man from his riding, Yaroslav Hunka, and praised the Ukrainian Canadian for fighting the Russians during the Second World War. Zelenskyy, Trudeau and the rest of the House rose to applaud Hunka.

Media reports later revealed that Hunka fought with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, also known as the SS 14th Waffen Division and sometimes the First Ukrainian Division. The unit was made up of Ukrainian volunteers from Galicia and was under Nazi command.

Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press

"The president of Ukraine stood up with the entire Parliament of Canada and applauded this man. How can this be imagined?" Putin told Carlson through a translator. Carlson posted the interview on X, formerly Twitter.

While historians say men joined the unit for a variety of reasons — including a desire to fight for Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union — the incident was a major diplomatic embarrassment for Canada.

Putin has repeatedly claimed he is waging war on Ukraine in order to "de-Nazify" the country and has jumped on the Hunka affair to justify his argument in the past.

Western allies, including Canada, have consistently pushed back against those claims, calling Russia's full-scale invasion a blatant violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.

During the interview, Putin suggested that the Hunka affair is "being silenced in Western countries," despite extensive media coverage of the incident last fall.

The Russian president has greatly limited his contact with international media since he launched the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022.

Western journalists were invited to Putin's annual press conference in December — the first since the war began — but only two were given the chance to ask a question.

Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that Carlson was chosen for the interview because "he has a position which differs" from other English-language media.

Before his exit from Fox News, Carlson repeatedly questioned the validity of U.S. support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion and speculated about why Americans are told to hate Putin so much. His commentaries were frequently circulated on Russian state-run media.

Tucker Carlson Network/Reuters

Carlson's trip comes as he aligns himself with former U.S. president Donald Trump in a growing split in the Republican party over Putin and the Ukraine war. Trump has pushed to cut off aid to Ukraine, and the GOP majority controlling the House of Representatives has so far complied.

The U.S. has sent Ukraine more than $110 billion US in aid since Russia invaded in February 2022.

Putin's stance on wider war in Europe

Putin, speaking in Russian with his words dubbed into English, made lengthy remarks about Russia's relations with Ukraine, Poland and other countries during the interview, which was more than two hours long.

He said he had no interest in expanding its war in Ukraine to other countries such as Poland and Latvia.

Asked if he could imagine a scenario in which he would send Russian troops to Poland, a NATO member. Putin replied: "Only in one case, if Poland attacks Russia. Why? Because we have no interest in Poland, Latvia or anywhere else. Why would we do that? We simply don't have any interest."

Putin, who will be seeking a fifth term as president in this year's election, said Western leaders had come to realize it was impossible inflict a strategic defeat on Russia and were wondering what to do next.

"We are ready for this dialogue," he said.

Putin devoted a substantial part of the interview to complaining that Ukraine had been on the verge of agreeing a deal to end hostilities at talks in Istanbul in April 2022, but backed away, he said, once Russian troops withdrew from near Kyiv.

| Vladimir Putin says Russia will intensify attacks on Ukaine:

"Well now let them think how to reverse the situation," he said. "We're not against it. It would be funny if it were not so sad … this endless mobilization in Ukraine, the hysteria, the domestic problems, sooner or later it will result in an agreement."

The Russian leader said the U.S. had pressing domestic issues to worry about.

"Wouldn't it be better to negotiate with Russia? Make an agreement. Already understanding the situation that is developing today, realizing that Russia will fight for its interests to the end," Putin said.

Washington has made clear it has no interest in talking on Putin's terms.


U.S. journalist's release possible

Putin told Carlson that it might be possible to free Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is awaiting trial on spying charges, in exchange for a Russian prisoner.

He said Russian and American special services were discussing the case and had made some progress.

The Russian president suggested that in return, Moscow wanted Germany to free Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted of the 2019 murder of a Chechen dissident in Berlin.

Gershkovich was arrested on March 29, 2023 in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and accused of trying to obtain defence secrets. He and his newspaper strongly reject the charges and the U.S. government has designated him as wrongfully detained.

Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters

Russia and the United States have agreed high-profile prisoner swaps in the past — most recently in December 2022, when Moscow traded Brittney Griner, a U.S. basketball star convicted of a drugs offence in Russia, for Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout.

Putin, without mentioning Krasikov by name, referred to a person who "due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals."

Last month a Moscow court extended Gershkovich's custody by two months. Putin said the reporter had been "caught red handed when he was secretly getting confidential information."

Putin likely chose Tucker Carlson because of his ignorance of Russia, and it showed

Tom Porter

BUSINESS INSIDER
Updated Fri, February 9, 2024 

• The former Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin.

• Putin most likely chose Carlson because of his ignorance of Russia and its history.

• Putin steamrolled Carlson with two hours of dubious history that he used to justify war on Ukraine.

Tucker Carlson claimed to be venturing into territory no other Western journalist had dared in interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin itself had hyped Carlson's credentials, saying he was the only Western journalist granted permission to talk to Putin in two years because his position was "in clear contrast to the position of the traditional Anglo-Saxon media."

But when the interview was released on Thursday, another likely reason Putin chose the former Fox News host for the two-hour interview became clear.

For much of it, Carlson sat in silence as Putin expounded his dubious historical theories about Ukraine, aired his grievances, and pushed MAGA talking points designed to appeal to Carlson's core audience.

"This is a stage for Big Vlad to showboat," Ian Garner, an expert on Russian propaganda, wrote on X as Putin seized control of the interview.

Putin has used these theories to justify his brutal invasion of Ukraine, where, according to the UN Human Rights Council, Russia has used mass killings, rape, and torture in an attempt to subjugate the country. Putin even published an essay on the theories just ahead of the invasion.

It matters because Putin is seeking to erode support for Ukraine among the GOP voters who form Carlson's core audience as congressional Republicans continue to block a $66 billion Ukraine aid bill.

Carlson seemed to lack the knowledge or willingness to offer even the most cursory pushback. He can perhaps be forgiven for appearing bemused when Putin started lecturing him on obscure historical figures, such as Rurik of Novgorod, but offered no challenge even as Putin discussed more recent events.

For instance, he allowed Putin to claim that the 2014 Maidan protests, in which Ukrainians took to the streets to demand freedom from Russian control, were a CIA plot. There's no evidence of this.

He also allowed Putin to claim, unchallenged, that Russia sought peace with Ukraine before launching the 2022 invasion. There's no evidence of this, with Russia illegally seizing swaths of Ukraine in 2014 and stoking conflict in the east of the country.

Putin was also able to claim, unchallenged, that the invasion was a bid to "de-Nazify" the country and not the campaign of revanchist conquest it is in reality.

Putin was given a two-hour platform to further undermine Republican support for Ukraine and offer an alternative version of history in which the US and NATO were the true aggressors.

Carlson will probably see a huge boost in his audience from the interview. Since his ouster from Fox News in 2023, he's been reduced to interviewing fringe figures such as an online conspiracy theorist who goes by the name "Catturd."

But in increasing his own profile, he's allowed Putin to present his alternative and vastly destructive historical theories to a whole new audience.

In response to earlier allegations that he was a pawn of Putin, Carlson told Axios in 2022: "I could care less."

"It's too stupid," he added. "I don't speak Russian. I've never been to Russia. I'm not that interested in Russia. All I care about is the fortunes of the United States because I have four children who live here."

That ignorance of Russia may be coming back to haunt him.

Who is Tucker Carlson, the man interviewing Vladimir Putin?

BBC
Thu, February 8, 2024

Tucker Carlson speaks during 2022 FOX Nation Patriot Awards at Hard Rock Live at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood on November 17, 2022 in Hollywood, Florid

American journalist Tucker Carlson is the first Western journalist to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin since his country's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The televised sit-down will air on Thursday, bringing a fresh wave of attention to Mr Carlson, once one of the highest-rated hosts in US network news and now an industry outsider.

In April of last year, around 8pm on a Friday night, Tucker Carlson addressed his viewers.

During his nightly broadcast on Fox News, he had run through a number of segments, all with his signature right-wing bent.

He lambasted President Joe Biden's plans to address racial biases in housing, attacked Mr Biden's son, Hunter, and mocked a commonly used acronym for gay, lesbian and transgender people.

At the end, he gave a cheery sign-off.

"We'll be back on Monday," he said. "In the meantime, have the best weekend with the ones that you love, and we'll see you then."

But Mr Carlson never returned.

That next Monday, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Fox announced the network and its most popular personality had agreed to "part ways". Tucker Carlson Tonight was no longer.

For six years, the hour-long prime-time programme had ruled the conservative airways, consistently drawing about three million viewers each evening.

And for Mr Carlson, now 54, the show had marked the peak of a career decades in the making.

The Californian - son of an artist and a roving journalist - had first entered the media world in the 1990s, writing for several prominent publications, including New York Magazine, Esquire and The New Republic.

In 2010, with his former university roommate Neil Patel, he founded the conservative news website The Daily Caller, seen as an alternative to left-leaning websites like Huffington Post. The site promised to emphasise original reporting over punditry, but was criticised for publishing unproven allegations against Democratic politicians and promoting racist and sexist stereotypes.

Mr Carlson cut ties with the site in 2020.

Mr Carlson pictured in the office of the Daily Caller, the conservative site he launched in 2010

As he grew his influence online, Mr Carlson also made a foray into broadcast. He worked as a commentator for CNN in the early 2000s before joining MSNBC to host a nightly programme.

It was here that Mr Carlson sharpened his conservative stances, growing increasingly critical of immigration - which he sometimes called an "invasion" - and becoming a voice for the Republican party's nativist wing.

After moving to Fox in 2009, Mr Carlson bounced around the network's minor leagues, including a 2013 stint as weekend co-host of its morning show, where he once fell asleep on air.

By 2016, he was ready for prime-time, launching Tucker Carlson Tonight just a few days after Donald Trump was elected president.

The debut episode attracted nearly four million viewers. But the host caught an even bigger break the next year, when Fox News fired Bill O'Reilly, its most popular host at the time.

Now there was an opening for the next network star, and Mr Carlson promptly took it.

With Mr Trump in the White House, he rode the wave of populist outrage that fuelled the Republican's political victory. His popularity ballooned, and his programme frequently set the agenda for conservatives and, by extension, the Republican party.

As he became appointment viewing for the political right, Mr Carlson also drew fire from fact-checkers and activists, who accused him of pushing racist and nationalist talking points, including the so-called "great replacement" conspiracy theory which claims a cabal of people is plotting to change the demographics of Western countries.

In one episode, he advocated for the US invasion of Canada. In another, he called the metric system the "yoke of tyranny".

And on several occasions, he used his perch at Fox to defend Russia's President Putin.

His controversial statements did not go unnoticed by Fox, who saw several large companies pull advertisements in protest. But for the most part, the network left him to his own devices.

With Donald Trump in the White House, Mr Carlson's popularity ballooned

Then, in April of last year, Mr Carlson's run at Fox came to a sudden end.

The network gave no formal reason for his dismissal, but Mr Carlson's departure was just days after Fox News paid an extraordinary $787m (£633m) settlement to Dominion Voting Systems over false election claims. The lawsuit revealed, among other things, that Mr Carlson derided Mr Trump's election fraud claims in private messages while backing them publicly on the air.

After a few weeks of quiet, Mr Carlson announced he would begin a new show on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

"Facts have been withheld on purpose along with proportion and perspective. You are being manipulated," he said in the announcement.

That December saw the birth of a paid streaming service, the Tucker Carlson Network, which Mr Carlson framed as free from corporate influence.

His content and guests have become increasingly fringe.

In July, he published a two-and-a-half hour interview with Andrew Tate, the British-American influencer accused in Romania of rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women.

He also posted a surprise Christmas Eve fireside chat with disgraced actor Kevin Spacey, as he reprised his role as House of Cards lead character, the fictional President Frank Underwood.

Largely, Mr Carlson has failed to re-create the popularity and attention he enjoyed at Fox. Mr Putin's appearance promises be a boon for him, and possibly a way for his star to rise again.

With reporting from Kayla Epstein & Madeline Halpert

Guy Stern, German-Jewish American GI who interrogated Nazi troops as one of the Ritchie Boys – obituary

Telegraph Obituaries
Fri, February 9, 2024 

Guy Stern on entering the US Army: after escaping to America in 1937, he never saw his family again

Guy Stern, who has died aged 101, was a German-born member of the Ritchie Boys, an American Military Intelligence interrogation unit, in the Second World War.

The Ritchie Boys were composed of German, Austrian and Czech refugees and immigrants, many of them, like Stern, Jewish. They were encouraged to converse in the language of their enemies and were selected for their linguistic skills, cultural background and intelligence.

In June 1944, shortly after D-Day, Stern embarked at Southampton and landed in Normandy. Within minutes, he was using abandoned crates as makeshift interrogation tables and chairs. The first German PoW that he interrogated was a tough artilleryman.


The man had been thoroughly briefed on his rights and was showing no sign of cooperating when a German shell came right over their heads. Both men knew that more were probably on their way. Stern’s questioning became urgent and menacing. He wanted answers at once. The man gave way.

After several successful interrogations, Stern was promoted to sergeant and given the task of collating and analysing reports from multiple sources. He was able to assess the state of German morale and to answer the question of how they managed to repair bombed railway tracks and rolling stock so quickly.

Guy Stern, left, on VE Day, May 1945, in Germany, with his fellow soldiers Walter Sears (centre) and Fred Howard (right)

Were there diseases among the German troops which might infect the Allied forces? What were the Allies’ most (and least) effective propaganda leaflets in Germany? Were the Germans close to launching a new rocket or embarking on chemical warfare? What progress had they made towards making an atomic bomb? Stern’s reports provided vital information.

He and his team were also in constant demand from bomber pilots who wanted the exact coordinates of important strategic targets. Their work, however, was hindered by the difficulty of persuading the most intransigent PoWs to give information.

They resolved, therefore, to tap into their prisoners’ greatest dread, the fear that they would be handed over to the Russians and sent to gulags in Siberia where they would probably starve to death. Stern was re-invented as Commissar Krukow, an irascible, semi-demented Russian liaison officer.

A uniform was found for him and he adopted a harsh Russian accent and a range of alarming growls and gesticulations. As the Allies advanced through Belgium, Holland and Germany, he and his comrades were constantly engaged in psychological warfare and, for the most part, this new stratagem worked.

After a Nazi officer specifically ordered the killing of captured German Jews, two fellow Ritchie Boys from another team were executed. Stern and his colleagues found the makeshift graves of their comrades. They resolved to gather every piece of evidence and this led to the reported capture, trial and execution of the man after the war.


Guy Stern's parents, Julius and Hedwig, and his siblings Werner and Eleonore, in 1938, the year after he had been sent to America: he never saw them again

Stern carried out mass interrogations of members of the Volkssturm to assess their capability to fight. These were over-age men and under-age boys who had been drafted into the German army in the final stages of the war. By the end of hostilities, Stern held the rank of master-sergeant and had been awarded the Bronze Star Medal.

He was born Günther Stern, the son of Julius Stern and Hedwig (née Silberberg), at Hildesheim, Germany, on January 14 1922. He had a younger brother and sister. His father sold clothing materials and was often travelling and away from home.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, the treatment of Jews became increasingly oppressive. At young Günther’s school, during a history lesson, the teacher handed out razor blades and the class had to cut out the pages in their text books indicated on the blackboard. All Jewish achievements were excised and replaced by distortions and falsehoods.

One evening, his father was putting letters in the mailbox when he was brutally beaten by a uniformed SS man. He only managed to get home with the help of a policeman.

Aged 14, young Günther was removed from high school by his father and an English tutor was hired to teach him. His Uncle Benno and Aunt Ethel, who lived in St Louis, Missouri, agreed to help him get to America and become his guardians.

With the help of a consular official in Hamburg, in November 1937, Günther left Germany and embarked for New York. He never saw his family again.

After completing high school, he enrolled at St Louis University and worked as a waiter in restaurants to pay for his tuition. When America entered the Second World War, Stern was enrolled in US Army Military Intelligence.

Together with many other foreign-born GIs, he became a naturalised American citizen and formally changed his name from Günther to Guy. After several weeks of basic training at the Induction Center, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he was posted to the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie, Maryland.

With the Ritchie Boys, Stern studied enemy intelligence, uniforms, aerial maps and orders of battle. He received close combat and weapons training, as well as instruction in encoding and deciphering messages and in conducting interrogations.

After a final examination, in which he interrogated German PoWs captured in North Africa, he and his intake were taken on manoeuvres. The camp was set up on the edge of a swamp, the small tents anchored in mud. They were visited by unfriendly tarantulas and an aggressive herd of razorback pigs.

At night, their team leader, in a cosy nightshirt, stretched out comfortably in a hammock sent to him by his rich family. This infuriated Stern and his comrades who had to sleep in the mud in their underwear. Determined to avenge themselves, one morning, while their leader was at HQ, they dug a slit trench under the hammock and filled it with garbage.

Late that night, a single file of pigs led by a large hungry boar tipped the team leader out of his hammock and started rooting around in search of a midnight feast. The unfortunate man fled, crying out: “Help! The pigs are after me!”

In 1944, Stern embarked for England in a banana boat. Equipped with field glasses, he was on night watch looking out for the periscopes of U-boats. The south of England had been turned into an armed camp in preparation for D-Day. Clifton College, Bristol, had been requisitioned by the US Army and Stern was billeted in the city.


Guy Stern at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies

After the war, he visited Hildesheim and learned that his former home had been confiscated by the Nazi government and his family had been sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. He never discovered whether they had perished there or in one of the Nazi concentration camps.

He went back to New York City and, in 1948, he received a degree in Romance Languages from Hofstra University. He was up at Columbia University until 1955 and, after being awarded a doctorate, he became an assistant professor at Denison University, Ohio.

In the 1960s, he was head of the department for German language and literature at the University of Cincinnati. He was later head of German and Slavic Studies at the University of Maryland, then served as professor of German literature and cultural history at Wayne State University, Detroit, until his retirement.

Stern was the director of the Harry and Wanda Zekelman International Institute of the Righteous at the Holocaust Memorial Center, Farmington Hills, near Detroit. In 2017, the French government appointed him to the Legion of Honour. He was also made an honorary citizen of Hildesheim.

He published Invisible Ink (2020), an autobiography, and several books on German literary history.

Guy Stern married, in 1948, Margith Langweiler. Their child died in infancy and they adopted a month-old son, Mark, who predeceased him. After the marriage failed, he married Judith Owens, a schoolteacher, who also predeceased him.

In 2006, he married Susanna Piontek, a Polish-born writer, whom he met in Germany and who survives him.

Guy Stern, born January 14 1922, died December 7 2023

How Trump wins from his damaging trade wars


Rick Newman
·Senior Columnist
Fri, February 9, 2024 

Donald Trump’s trade wars flopped.

The former president promised to boost American manufacturing through import tariffs and other protectionist measures, and it didn’t work. Yet the voters Trump was appealing to rewarded him anyway, according to a new study by prominent trade economists. That may explain why Trump now says he’ll intensify his trade wars if elected to a second term.

Economists bristle at the popular appeal of tariffs and other barriers to trade, which might sound like they protect American jobs but generally depress growth and raise costs. Trump disregarded such concerns as president, imposing new tariffs of up to 25% on about half of all Chinese imports to the United States. President Joe Biden left those in place after he took office in 2021, probably because repealing them could have made him look "soft on China."

Trump says he’ll add a new 60% tariff to all Chinese imports if he wins a second term. That would be economic folly, but it might have a political payoff — and a new analysis of Trump’s first trade war helps explain why. The study, by economists David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson, found that Trump’s China tariffs did more harm than good to the US economy. Yet they boosted political support for Trump in key parts of the country. Whether through Trump’s hucksterism or some other machination, voters seemingly embraced a policy that helped nobody and hurt some.

Trump’s principal beef on trade is the large US deficit in goods with China.

We buy much more of their stuff than they buy of ours. Economists generally say trade deficits aren’t a problem, as long as the domestic economy is innovative and growing. But Trump insisted on tariffs to raise the cost of Chinese imports, which he said would spur more domestic production and create new American jobs. In 2018 and 2019, he imposed tariffs ranging from 7.5% to 25% on about half of all Chinese imports, or about $360 billion worth of products.

China retaliated with tariffs on imports from the United States, targeting agricultural products such as pork, soybeans, and cotton. China stopped buying some American products altogether, causing the US farm sector billions in annual losses. To help offset that, Trump set up a bailout fund for farmers hurt by the trade war.

All of that accomplished nothing and arguably worse than nothing.

The US trade deficit with China has declined from $379 billion in 2017, before Trump launched his trade war, to $279 billion in 2023. But the US trade deficit with other nations, such as Vietnam and Mexico, has soared, largely because Chinese producers began routing their products through third-party nations not subject to the tariffs. The nation’s trade deficit in goods with the whole world hit nearly $1.1 trillion in 2023, 34% more than in 2017.

To figure out whether the Trump tariffs boosted American output or employment, the Autor analysis isolated regions and sectors, such as manufacturing in the Midwest, which should have benefited from the Trump tariffs. They didn’t. The study has three conclusions: First, the Trump tariffs produced no boost in manufacturing employment. Second, China’s retaliatory tariffs reduced US agricultural employment. Third, Trump’s farm bailout helped offset some, but not all, of the job losses in agriculture.

A simple way of visualizing this outcome, or non-outcome, is to simply look at manufacturing employment during Trump’s presidency. It rose nicely during his first two years in office, but plateaued and then dipped in 2019, when the full force of the Trump tariffs went into effect. That happened well before the COVID pandemic arrived in 2020 and caused a short but deep recession.

Many other studies have reached similar conclusions.

The Tax Foundation, for instance, finds that Trump’s tariffs lowered US employment by 166,000 US jobs, with retaliatory tariffs killing another 29,000. The higher taxes paid by importers, meanwhile, amount to $74 billion in increased government revenue over a decade. Contrary to Trump’s insistence, however, it’s not China paying those higher taxes. It’s American firms that import the products, pay the tax and pass the higher costs onto consumers.

The tariffs worked to Trump’s advantage anyway.

The Autor study found that in local economies where the tariffs were supposed to help (but didn’t), Trump’s 2020 vote share rose by 0.67% compared with what it would have been absent the tariffs.

“The trade war appears to have been successful in strengthening support for the Republican party,” the study concludes. “Residents of tariff-protected locations became less likely to identify as Democrats and more likely to vote for President Trump. Voters appear to have responded favorably to the extension of tariff protections to local industries despite their economic cost.”

Trump obviously lost in 2020, but a vote swing of two-thirds of a percentage point can be bigger than it sounds. In 2020, Biden won Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by smaller margins than that. If Trump won those three states, the electoral college vote would have been a 269-269 tie, and the House of Representatives would have decided the outcome, probably in favor of Trump. Many forecasters think this year’s race will be just as close as it was in 2020.

The Autor study proposes two possible reasons Trump gained politically from tariffs that didn’t really help anybody. The first is that “voters were misinformed about the employment impacts of the trade war.” Trump certainly did his best to misinform voters. He called the two-way tariff escalation an “amazing deal” and a “momentous step” and repeatedly bragged about a manufacturing resurgence that never happened.

Voters may also have appreciated Trump’s effort to help them, even if it didn’t work.

You could regard that possibility in two ways. One, at least Trump made an earnest effort to help. Or, Trump made a deliberate and cynical show of trying to help, knowing it wouldn’t matter. Sometimes, telling voters what they want to hear might be enough.


Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman.