Steven Seagal Rules Out Running for Governor of Siberia: ‘Fake News’ (Video)
The actor sat for an interview with Tucker Carlson on Tuesday evening
Jon Levine | October 10, 2018 @ 5:57 AM
Last Updated: October 10, 2018 @ 6:20 AM
Steven Seagal says he will not be running for governor of Siberia.
The actor, who is originally from Michigan but became a Russian citizen in 2016, said media reports that he would seek higher office in the snowy region of his adopted homeland were “fake news.”
“This is one of the millions of fake news sort of stories,” said Seagal on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “I was at a film festival in Vladivostok … and somebody in the audience said, ‘hey man we don’t have a governor here, you want to become the governor’ and I said ‘sure’ and there it went.”
“At the same time, we said 30 times, ‘guys we were joking.’ Vladivostok had a friend of mine become governor there the next day. It was just a joke that the press enjoyed doing bad things to certain people with,” he added.
Carlson, smirking through the segment, offered broad agreement.
Seagal then shared his belief that the Russia collusion story “was all a fantasy” and Vladimir Putin was a “brilliant strategist” which elicited no pushback from the normally combative Carlson.
Seagal’s comments were also picked up by Russian state controlled media including RT and TASS.
The actor went on to tell Carlson that Russians he talked to were inclined to believe Brett Kavanaugh’s denials of sexual misconduct when he was a young man.
“They’re just completely bemused. Some of them are laughing and some of them are crying but the basic consensus is that they’re finding it astounding and hard to believe that so much is being made of this and a lot of these accusations against people like Kavanaugh, they just are finding it … incredulous,” he said.
Unmentioned throughout were the allegations of rape and sexual harassment against Seagal dating back to 1994, which you can read more about here.
When Seagal was pressed on his own past during a BBC interview last week, he wordlessly stormed off set. The story was widely reported — including by Carlson’s own network, Fox News.
Mark Fuhrman: 5 Facts About the Cop Who Helped Free OJ Simpson (Photos)
Detective Mark Fuhrman, whose frequent use of the N-word was the basis of O.J. Simpson's successful defense in his double murder case, is providing commentary for Fox News as the former football star seeks parole for his robbery sentence. Let's learn more about the ex-cop whose racial slurs helped Simpson go free.
1. Before the Simpson case, Furhman took part in taped interviews with a screenwriter in which he used the N-word 41 times. Judge Lance Ito determined that in all uses, Furhman was using the word in "a disparaging manner."
At one point he said, "all these n---ers in L.A. City government ... should be lined up against a wall and fucking shot." But don't take our word for it; here's a court transcript.
2. Fuhrman later explained the tapes, which were filled with sexist and racist accounts, and tales of police abuses, by writing in his book, "Murder in Brentwood": "Throughout the interviews, I was creating fictional situations, sometimes based loosely on the true incidents ... I can see the misguided, get-rich-quick mentality I had then. Hearing my ugly words and not knowing the context, the public was understandably outraged."
3. The defense almost immediately focused on Fuhrman as a weak point in the case against Simpson. In July 1994, a month after Simpson's arrest, New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin published evidence that in the '80s Fuhrman was either "dangerously unbalanced" or had faked mental problems to win a pension.
In that story, Fuhrman denied planting a bloody glove on Simpson's property to frame him for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.
4. Defense lawyer Johnnie Cochran tried to warn prosecutor Chris Darden about Fuhrman. Darden writes in his book "In Contempt" that Cochran told him: "This shouldn't be your issue. Let these white people get up there and argue about Fuhrman. OK?"
5. Darden says Fuhrman confessed to him that he collected Nazi medals. He wrote that Fuhrman told him: "I like to collect World War II memorabilia ... Don't take this the wrong way, but I collect German medals."
Furhman is part of Fox News’ coverage of O.J. Simpson’s parole hearing
Detective Mark Fuhrman, whose frequent use of the N-word was the basis of O.J. Simpson's successful defense in his double murder case, is providing commentary for Fox News as the former football star seeks parole for his robbery sentence. Let's learn more about the ex-cop whose racial slurs helped Simpson go free.
