Vladimir Putin pulled a classic power move that steamrolled Tucker Carlson

• 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.

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.

Carlson was the latest victim of Putin’s power play, losing command of the interview released on Thursday.

He said Putin “launched into an extremely detailed history going back to the 9th century of the formation of Russia, from the tribes into a nation, and Ukraine’s part in that.”

In the interview, Putin claimed there was no such thing as a Ukrainian nation. He said Ukrainians were really Russians rebranded by different political players in an effort to undermine Russia’s authority over its borders with European nations, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Putin “rewrote centuries of history to this effect,” the institute said.

His lengthy answers “annoyed” Carlson, who said: “I thought it was filibustering.”

Jonathan Eyal, a Russia expert at the Royal United Services Institute, previously told Business Insider that Putin’s strategy of making people wait indicated “more or less how seriously he takes you, or how pleased he is with you.”

After Trump waited an hour to meet the Russian leader, Eyal said having to wait only an hour was Putin’s sign of approval: “I think that this is a backhanded compliment.”

The Guardian quoted Lyudmila Putina, Putin’s ex-wife, saying his lateness on their first dates reduced her to tears.

She said that while she was “never late,” Putin “always was,” continuing: “An hour and a half was normal. I remember standing around in the metro. The first 15 minutes of lateness are OK; half an hour also fine. But when an hour goes by, and he’s still not there, you start crying.”