In a recent interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson released on Tuesday, NFL star Aaron Rodgers commended Russian President Vladimir Putin as an “interesting, intelligent individual” and criticized Covid vaccines.
The New York Jets star and Super Bowl-winning quarterback described Carlson’s February interview with the Russian leader, Putin’s first with any Western media since his forces invaded Ukraine in 2022, as “impressive.”
“Putin came off as an interesting, thoughtful, smart individual. And if you’ve read ‘1984,’ the base game plan of government control is you have to have an enemy, and you have to slander that enemy regardless if you know anything about them,” Rodgers said.
“I think a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, Putin apologists are like, whitewashing all the stuff that he’s done to the different people.’ I was just like, no, I’d love to, I’d love to see Joe Biden give an interview where he can speak on the history of the United States in the same way that Putin talked about the history of his country.”
After departing Fox News a year ago, Carlson started creating his own content, which he shares on YouTube and X.
The extensive interview, spanning over two hours, delved into topics such as the pandemic, vaccination ethics, mortality, patriotism, Edward Snowden, psychedelic encounters, and governmental suppression of evidence concerning extraterrestrial life.
“There’s some wild things out there that we don’t know about at minimum,” he said. “Whether you believe in alien life, UFOs, UAPs, whatever you want to call it, there’s some technology out there that exists … [but] the government or powers that be don’t think we’re ready to be given that information, which is wild.”
Rodgers, who remains unvaccinated, has frequently stirred controversy by endorsing conspiracy theories regarding the safety of Covid vaccines and questioning the reliability of scientific data on coronaviruses’ effects and origins.
Despite consistent findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicating no connection between vaccines and issues like fatal cardiac arrest in young individuals, Rodgers persists in his skepticism, acknowledging that while adverse effects are uncommon, they are not nonexistent.
During his conversation with Carlson, Rodgers also expressed skepticism about the circumstances surrounding the death of NFL star Pat Tillman, who enlisted in the army after 9/11 and was killed in action in Afghanistan two decades ago.
Rodgers characterized Tillman’s death as “suspicious” and accused the U.S. government of exploiting it to promote war propaganda.
In March, Rodgers refuted a CNN report alleging that he had cast doubt on the official narrative of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults.
Additionally, Rodgers, previously considered a potential running mate for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, disclosed during the interview that he had contemplated accepting the position.
