Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been mocked for praising Russian grocery stores.
During Carlson’s recent trip to Moscow to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin, he stopped off at a local grocery store to see how prices compare now during its war against Ukraine versus when it was part of the Soviet Union.
Carlson was filmed gleefully picking out a cart full of groceries, which included wine from Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.
“I went from amused to legitimately angry,” Carlson said in the video. The weeks’ worth of groceries that Carlson bought cost $103.82.
Gavriil Grigorov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
Carlson continued: “If you take people’s standard of living and you tank it through filth and crime and inflation. And they literally can’t buy the groceries they want. At that point, maybe it matters less what you say or whether you are a good person or a bad person.
“You’re wrecking people’s lives and their country, and that’s what their leaders have done to us. And coming to a Russian grocery store, the heart of evil,” Carlson said mockingly. “And seeing what things cost and how people live, it will radicalize you against our leaders. That’s how I feel, anyway—radicalized.”
Newsweek reached out to Carlson through his website via email for comment.
Social media users made fun of Carlson’s shopping trip on Thursday.
Republicans against Trump shared a clip from Carlson’s video on X, formerly Twitter, and wrote: “In his new episode of ‘Russia is awesome, the US is crap,’ Kremlin propagandist Tucker Carlson tells us how everyday life in Russia is so much more affordable than in America where ‘people can’t buy the groceries they want.'”
“Carlson prefers the aesthetics and policy outcomes of ethnonationalist, illiberal autocracies that punish immigrants and LGBTQ people to pluralist, liberal democracies that do not,” wrote Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a nonprofit that monitors media coverage of right-wing figures.
USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke said: “I am 1,000% in favor of Tucker Carlson doing everything he can to get his followers to move to Russia.”
“Tucker Carlson bragging that Russia is better than America because groceries are cheaper in the poorer country is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen,” X user Armand Domalewski posted.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.