There’s a Tucker Born Every Minute

By Rachael Larimore, The Dispatch, Feb. 18, 2024 - As if Tucker Carlson hadn’t debased himself enough during his two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which he let his subject spread propaganda and revisionist history, the former Fox News host continued his tour of Russia by marveling at how affordable a trip to the grocery store was (never mind that $104 for groceries is a lot in a country where the average salary is below $800 a month) and geeking out over some decades-old grocery cart technology. 

“Tucker’s Slavic version of Supermarket Sweep is not good propaganda,” Nick wrote in Boiling Frogs. “And the news on Friday morning made it look worse.” Nick was referring to the death of dissident Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison. Navalny was heroic in his opposition to the Putin regime, returning to Russia and certain imprisonment after surviving being poisoned in 2020 with a powerful nerve agent. Carlson did tell the Daily Mail after the Russian opposition leader’s death that “It’s horrifying what happened to Navalny.” But only days before, at an appearance in Dubai, he was asked why he didn’t press Putin on assassinations in general and Navalny specifically—and said that “leadership requires killing people.” 

As Nick wrote, “Navalny’s death is the exclamation point on a week in which Carlson established himself as a chump for the ages, a man practicing propaganda at a T-ball level and somehow still whiffing on swing after swing.” Speaking of Tucker, Kevin also had some thoughts: “What Carlson was up to in Moscow wasn’t journalism—journalism is what Evan Gershkovich did, and what Tucker did was, at best, tourism. It is tempting to call him a useful idiot, but he isn’t an idiot. He knows what he is doing.” 

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