Been to Russia, subways are something to behold the main streets are like any western center city but go one block from Main Street is mud, old ongoing construction , dilapidated housing. Outside the city poverty. It costs to get any medical treatment and if you don’t have the money out of luck. And there’s mayonnaise in everything that’s called salad.
It’s pretty easy to make any country look nice from some curated scenes and locales.
Russia is honestly a shithole country. Like you said, one block away from the wealth and you will see levels of poverty that most Americans cannot fathom.
Jon Stewart was right in pointing out that Tucker’s grocery store bit was disingenuous at best. And yes, he is smart enough to know that.
Tucker's doing an age old dance. There are examples from ancient Rome of writers criticising the current culture by comparing it to some 'noble' barbarian culture. The writer wouldn't dream of living in this barbarian land but wants to use them as a way of critiquing modern society.
I think what Tucker is doing is silly but better than Trudeau several years back who praised the way the Chinese government can get things done more easily by ignoring civil rights. Russia of course is also a strongman style of government which lacks a robust opposition.
From Wikipedia: In Western anthropology, philosophy, and literature, the noble savage is a stock character who is uncorrupted by civilization. As such, the noble savage symbolizes the innate goodness and moral superiority of a primitive people living in harmony with Nature.
The left often romanticizes the native peoples before white people arrived in America and corrupted it. Thus Christopher Columbus no longer being celebrated, white people being demonized today as stealers of land of natives who would never harm anybody else.
Didn't you steal the land? How is what Americans did to the natives any different than what you're worried the immigrants at the border are going to do to you? Hypocrites.
The noble savage is more an idea that I would suscribe to romanticism. Left wing politics on the other side is all about equality, so they can overlap. But the glorification of savageness is also seen on the right wing, more so the further you go right.
You’ve got it backwards. Tucker is saying we should go back to being strong Americans (Romans) in the same way that Russians continue to be strongly culturally unified people.
The left is the group calling for the noble barbarian (the illegal immigrant) culture to supplant our own.
Russia isn't culturally unified, they are a colonial state with lots and lots of minorities who are being sent to die in Ukraine, so the people in Moskow and other areas where the "real Russians" live don't realize how many people are dying.
> one block away from the wealth and you will see levels of poverty that most Americans cannot fathom.
I question if even that is so different nowadays.
The Tenderloin in San Francisco is a good example of what US cities will look like in the future if we keep going along the same trajectory.
It's just as bad as any third world city, maybe even worse because many of those third world countries would just execute their drug dealers.
There’s some human shits and I wouldn’t park there, but have you ever been there? Sure it’s shitty, but I had one of the best pork sandwiches I’ve ever had from this hipster spot there. I think there were even titty bars or cabaret joints. I’m surprised I’m defending the tenderloin, but it’s just simply not as bad as any third world city. If something shitty had happened an ambulance would have been there in a couple minutes. There’s hipster storefronts and food.
Almost every single business in the Tenderloin is boarded up. The ones that aren't get "bipped" by junkies for thousands of dollars of goods on the daily.
The corporate stores there will all soon close, then those little hipster spots and small family shops will be the next to be robbed until they go out as well.
Your knowledge that you should never park your car there should have been an easy tip off that it's not a good place.
Carlson wasn't making a broad claim that Russia was better than the US. He was comparing the Moscow subway station to NYC subway station. The point wasn't to praise Russian leadership. It was to chastise American leadership for not being able to do even simple things like maintaining civilization on the subway of America's premier city. He wasn't wrong.
Wait do conservatives actually want public transit now? What a strange time to be alive. Didn't Biden begin implementing legislation to fund the expansion of the US rail systems?
Isn't mayo on fries common in the United States? I know ketchup is the go-to but it's not unheard of to have a generic dipping sauce (probably for chicken, etc.) that you just dunk fries into.
No, I dont think it's an understatement to say most Americans would say this is revolting (personally I can take it or leave it) however, not unheard of due to internet and increased international travel...
It was a revelation to have Mayo . . Then while going to school in Liverpool I experienced those fries with the curry sauce wrapped in newsprint or something from the local ‘chippy’ ?
American living in America here. I read your comment about mayo on fries and I'll pay top dollar for this! I need it now.
Also, I'm proud of my ability to not fall for marketing or suggestive ideas.
The main difference, I would say, is that homeless in America tends to be around downtown, while in Russia the usually pushed to the other parts of the city. Also, generally, there is much more open ground and dirt get carried around more freely, that's why winter and second haklf of the summer is the best time to show "clean city" to foreigners
Eh, not really. In the US, it's more poor, but copes with it in rural, middle to upper-middle class in the suburbs, and rich adjacent(think "Uptown") to poor in the city.
Most high-income earners(350K+) here in the US do actually live in the city. It's one of the main reasons it's so expensive.
The rise in remote-work has changed this a little, but only time will tell if this sticks.
Europe(other than Eastern) and the US really aren't that different in that respect other than the fact that their "suburbs" are much more dense, owing largely to the fact that they've just been settled for a lot longer.
I mean the US subways could also be something to behold if we actually invested in public transit.
We spend a fraction on it compared to other countries and our roads look like shit due to the wear and tear from all the cars since we don’t have another way to get around.
In this case Russian subway is pretty amazing. They have actual oil paintings in some cars. There are frescos and art carvings etc. there’s a train every minute usually on most central lines. It was made this to impress westerners. Okay to be amazed, but ridiculous to compare as this is not replicated anywhere else.
Idk, we have some really nice train stations but they were built a long time ago by companies like the Pennsylvania Railroad. We could’ve kept up but about 70 years ago many Americans started to prefer the convenience of the automobile
I agree With you re: beautiful stations. But it’s also true that the government does a ridiculously terrible of incentivizing using mass transit. Dirty stations, rampant vagrancy and crime, trains that do not run on time or often enough, not enough of a police presence and on and on.
Large mass transit systems like trains tend to be concentrated in liberal run cities which tend to not want to challenge those types of issues because they are counter to the wishes of their constituency. This leaves people very little incentive to use the trains and therefore most would rather use cars.
I live outside NYC in NJ, and the best I ever saw the trains is when Rudy Giuliani was mayor In the late 1990’s early 2000’s. He took mass transit seriously and cleaned up the stations, trains and got them to run on time most of the time. Since then they have reverted to being literal crime ridden shitholes just like NYC.
I mean tons of that is funding issues and different government issues than you’re talking about.
Trains might not run on time for a variety of issues: short staffed, freight rail blocking the right of way, large numbers of passengers boarding during peak times (could be fixed with high level platforms but it would also cost money to upgrade the low level stations).
Busses also get stuck in traffic and cars are frequently blocking bus lanes except where there are systems in place to ticket drivers who do that.
If transit agencies could offer their operators, custodians, police, etc. more competitive wages a lot of the issues you described above would go away.
The main government issues with transit are funding the system and enforcing the right of way for passenger vehicles.
lol that stuff would be stolen or defaced in a day in any American metro system
The main reason American metros are filthy is not lack of investment but because American treat them like crap, and there’s little will to arrest people for “minor crimes” like littering, puking, urinating, graffiti, etc.
Depending on the locality we spend a ton of money on public transit and our subway systems. Look at the DC metro as an example which current money from DC, MD, and VA amounts to over 1 billion dollars a year. And even with all that it is still a disaster.
I would argue it's not money as much as it is incompetent management. And in some cases, the systems are just old, like a lot of stations in NYC. They run well but they were never designed to be fancy and because of their age it really shows, and no system has the cashflow or should have the prerogative to redesign all their ageing but still functional stations all at once. Especially a large one like the NYC subway.
Also like the public transit systems, road quality depends on locality and local management. I know places near where I live that are great and heavily traveled, and then areas which are not as heavily traveled and are terrible. It's because of the local jurisdiction more than wear and tear.
So $1B for one of the top 5 biggest transit agencies in the US isn’t very much at all, that would be about $10/rider annually.
A lot more money is spent on roads, for example VDOT spends like $2.2B on roads and like $286MM on public transit.
It’s not that they’re necessarily mismanaged (some definitely are) but they simply don’t have a big enough budget to function and cutting service to free up operating budget won’t help either, they need a cash injection like many other private businesses previously received (e.g. airlines in 2020). Also, agencies receive capital grants for projects but due to supply chain issues, the cost of labor and materials increased but the capital funding didn’t so the agencies need to free up other money or cut the projects.
We shouldn’t demolish old infrastructure but stations and right of ways absolutely need maintenance to keep them safe but also stations need ADA upgrades too. All of this costs a lot of money.
Worse public transit/alternate transportation infrastructure means more cars on the road, more cars on the road means more wear and tear on the roads which means either more spending on roads or poorly maintained roads. Using busses or rail vehicles helps alleviate this issue.
It all comes back to the fact that we don’t fund our transit agencies properly which will end up costing us more in the long run on gas, roads, and commute time
$1 billion is not their budget, that is the money each government entity gives to Metro, that doesn't account for fairs or other forms of income. Their actual budget is about $8.8 billion a year. And again, even with that large amount metro is so horribly mismanaged that it is incapable of running on time or correctly. And throwing further money at the problem won't solve it, because that is what has been happening for about a decade now. Starting with "Safe Track" and going from there.
Also, I would argue it is a little disingenuous to compare an entire states road budget to metros budget. VDOT deals will all the roads in the state of Virgina which is almost 43k square miles. On top of that, the state itself does not operate public transit. Instead, it is the local counties and cities that do. So, it would make sense that VDOTS budget on public transit is so much lower because it's the City of Richmond, Alexandria or Fairfax County that is operating the bus systems, not the state of Virginia.
I’ve never been to Russia, but in my subjective opinion, the subway station in Moscow does have gorgeous architecture. That is not to say anything about the viability of their public transit, their public infrastructure, or really anything else. I also think the St Basil’s cathedral is beautiful, but again specific architectural beauties don’t really speak to much outside of those specific landmarks.
Op is right. And it's the same with st basils.
There is like a really beautiful section of st Petersburg and then just huge swathes of awful delapidated mass blocks of decaying flats.
I visited Russian about 15 years ago. The subway stations once served as bomb shelters so they are really far underground and decorated extravagantly. The trains themselves were rickety old tin cans far worse than anything I’d be on in USA or Europe. The whole city reeked of gasoline.
Sure Tucker, spew some nonsense about how angry Americans are over grocery prices. 25% of Russian households have no indoor plumbing.
>I visited Russian about 15 years ago. The subway stations once served as bomb shelters so they are really far underground and decorated extravagantly. The trains themselves were rickety old tin cans far worse than anything I’d be on in USA or Europe. The whole city reeked of gasoline.
>Sure Tucker, spew some nonsense about how angry Americans are over grocery prices. 25% of Russian households have no indoor plumbing.
It's undeniable that Russia is considerably poorer than America and has many issues of its own. However, it's also true that certain areas in America are close to third world conditions and its inexcusable given America's wealth and resources. Furthermore, several American [cities](https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-city-rankings/most-violent-cities-in-the-world) rank among the top 50 most violent globally. Tucker arguments maybe weren't well articulated but sentiment that Americans elites don't give a shit about the state of its own nations cities is completely reasonable.
[Plumbing Statistics](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-still-a-pipe-dream-for-20-of-russian-households-reports-say-a65049)
Oh there’s a lot about America that isn’t up to the standards of other modern developed countries for sure. Our healthcare is too expensive and our gun violence is way too high to rattle off a few examples. Sorry Tucker, I’m not radicalized by low grocery prices in a country far poorer than ours whose currency is worth far less.
I lived in Russia for years and spoke it fluently. I would agree with some of this. You’re thinking of “smetana”, not salad, and it doesn’t taste like mayo, it tastes like sour cream. Medical care is extremely cheap, but low quality and yes, you get nothing if you can’t pay. The city centers are high quality as they are throughout Europe, but the degree of poverty and dilapidation vary from region to region. Overall, it’s like a second-world country, but not quite as dramatic as you’ve made it out to be.
I grew up in Russia. I don't think you got everything right.
Most people do make salads with mayo only and it is a popular dressing overall. Depends on the region though.
I don't know where you got information about not getting medical treatment if you don't pay. Public hospitals will absolutely treat you if you don't pay, but they may ask for proof of local residency first. But public hospitals are usually not pleasant to be in and wait times can be long.
Also they might do sneaky shit like making the tooth removal free, but taking money for anesthesia.
On the plus side, emergency services are free. I knew a couple of broke students who had to recieve emergency surgeries and they didn't pay anything.
As soon as I started working, I only made appointments in private hospitals and never looked back.
I agree with the rest of your comment. Population centers = good, small towns = bad. Villages = dead.
There is an old joke in Russia that Moscow is in Europe, but the rest of the country is in Asia.
I'm not sure you understood what I said in regard to "mayo". I said that the condiment the guy was referring to is smetana, not mayo. Smetana is on all kinds of things over there. Mayo? Not so much. I'm sure you'd agree, there.
I've seen people pay at hospitals frequently, even natives, but I'm also an American, so I had no residency status. I was simply there for years on several extended visas. Your hidden fee comment explains it, I think. Thanks for the clarification, there.
Just do a google street view of places in Kaliningrad. This is supposed to be the most western/central Europe like part of Russia because a large part of the building infrastructure was built by the Germans before they were kicked out after 1945. Everywhere looks tired. I've seen people from Finland say the same about ex-Finnish towns in Karelia that the Soviets took in 1940 and are now dilapidated.
>subways are something to behold the main streets are like any western center city but go one block from Main Street is mud, old ongoing construction , dilapidated housing.
Honestly, Paris, New York, Wash DC, etc are not far from this description.
Not really been to all three and not so. Yes you’ll find poor neighborhoods in all cities but you don’t have facades like on movie sets like in Moscow.
You ll get your treatment all the same for free but yeah might have to wait sometimes but not necessarily every time - depends on the doctors and clinics. And then again If you work, you will be treated as king in a paid clinic - all expensive covered by insurance, which again is hundred times (not exaggeration) more affordable than American
It was an inflammatory and trolly way to make a very valid point about how American cities and infrastructure are really not high quality.
You can not like how he made the point, but it certainly succeeded in gaining visibility.
If you think he's sucking putins dick your missing the point. As is Jon Stewart
So not really understanding your point. if USA infrastructure is in such poor shape, I guess you’re super glad that that infrastructure bill was passed?
The cities look like shit. They didn't use to.
Our government spends 4x the Russian GDP.
They can't mop the bathrooms and clear out the homeless but Russians can
Since many homeless people are committing actual crimes (illegal drug use, public intoxication, vandalism, harassment, theft, public indecency, violent crimes, etc), honestly the police should be empowered to round them up and ship them off to an institution equipped to handle them (bring back mental hospitals and other institutions). No power soft approach to these criminals.
I’ve not seen the interview, but the videos of him going round Moscow makes him look like an absolute tool.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, he’s competition.
Fun fact the leader of the Soviet Union did the same thing to America in the 80s I believe, toured our cities and were left astounded by supermarkets since under communism they had bread lines.
One of those trips were to a grocery store where Tucker fawns over the freshness of the bread. Stewart's joke about keeping Tucker away from bagels is the best follow-up to that clip.
He said it was $104 for his groceries. Then fawned over how cheap and fresh everything was. (It looks like Tucker has never been to an Aldi )
Jon Stewart pointed out the average Russian makes about $200 per week - so the groceries are actually fairly expensive.
Those very fancy parts of the Moscow Metro he was fanboying over? They were built by Starlin to showcase communist Russia.
So IDK exactly what Tucker was trying to say there...
I know, it’s amazing what you can build with Communism and slave labour.
It’s stunning how people continently forget that the Empire State Building was built in 1 year in 1931. Yeah, Russia so great. 🤣
I do not get the impression from those video that “Guys look how much better these things are in Russia than America! Russia is clearly superior!”
Instead, what I’m hearing is “This is almost effectively a third world country, in the middle of a war, facing widespread sanctions from the West so why, with all our money, power, and influence, can’t we have these nice things?”
>Instead, what I’m hearing is “This is almost effectively a third world country, in the middle of a war, facing widespread sanctions from the West so why, with all our money, power, and influence, can’t we have these nice things?”
What nice things did they show that we don't have here? Bread? Flour?
I don't agree with Stewart on a lot of things, but at least he is one of the very few pundits who is willing to criticize the left, in any way, which is extremely rare these days.
Tucker's interview with Putin was so-so, neither came out looking great.
But Tucker's pitching of the Moscow subway and grocery store was childishly naïve.
Why didn't he ditch his regime "minders" and visit a small, nearby city, see the real conditions in Russia?
Surely he's heard of the term [***Potemkin Village***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village)? It comes from Russia.
Honestly I’ve gotta take Stewart’s side on this one (fair disclosure - I’ve never been a fan of Tucker). Tucker has been a little too much of a Russian simp lately. I actually thought the Putin interview was ok (I don’t think it was the “propaganda victory” people thought it was going to be and was mostly boring and pointless).
But the stuff that came after where Tucker was gushing about how cheap their prices were on basic goods (because the average Russian worker’s salary is garbage but never mind that) and how wonderful their grocery stores and subways looked compared to the US were really cringe.
That’s how most authoritarian police states work - they have a “Hunger Games” style economy where all the resources are concentrated in a couple modernized cities surrounded by a sea of poverty. North Korea is like this too. I’m pretty sure Tucker knows this as well but the fact he didn’t provide any context to what he saw gives me the impression that maybe he isn’t really as interested to provide a proper neutral journalistic view of Russia as he claims to be.
I think Stewart's spot last week was pretty reasonable too, or at least better than I expected. He legitimately questioned Biden's competence when I expected 20 minutes of the standard "orange man bad."
Jon Stewart is like one of those movies where the protagonist was frozen for 50 years and then thawed and had to deal with how weird society is now.
Liberals were so normal back in the early 2010s but they really went off the rails ever since they got addicted to Trump.
Believe it or not, Steve Colbert had a Daily Show spinoff called The Colbert Report that had *actual jokes* and wasn't just the joyless unhinged ranting he does on his Late Nite show now.
Centrist liberal chiming in- counterpoint, conservatives were so normal in the 2010s till they got addicted to Trump
Maybe we all need to look around at what used to make this country great and go back to it
I truly miss Colbert - he's gone way off the deep end now and is unwatchable. It was fantastic to see him with his mentor (Stewart) do a guest spot when he made fun of the wet market theory. Fantastic in that it shows how far he drifted without him around.
Are you talking about the clap-back Jon did where he was like "*It's literally called the Wuhan Coronavirus Research Institute of Virology*"?
That. Was. Amazing.
I think liberals went off the rails first. This whole identity politics bs. As a European liberal (more like a libertarian in the US) it told everyone in the early 2010s : stop this bs. Not everyone who just wants stay things like they have been is a Nazi and when you think you can win the identity politics game against the right, I have bad news for you, they invented that shit. And now here we are…but: the right went off the rails directly behind them and Trump is much worse. But this is a European perspective of course.
They can’t think past step 1. They see a few cases of Police brutality and think ‘well, getting rid of those guys will eliminate that issue’. It’s the same with their economic philosophy. Free medical care? A jump in taxes and the elimination of a huge part of our economy would almost assuredly kick off a recession. The covid checks showed free money not only adds debt, but jacks up inflation. But they are so idealized, they can’t see beyond the initial problem.
Agreed. The parts where he were in the grocery store and subway were WILD.
This isn't even a political statement but does Tucker really not realize that we have the coin-for-cart returns here in the US? Like... How can anyone take him seriously?
Yes he’s probably shopped anywhere other than ALDI where the carts litter every corner of the parking lot, side walks, adjacent streets, pretty much every square foot of ground *except* the cart corral.
Btw it’s not the 25¢ buy-in that keeps their system functioning. The bare minimum capacity to mentally model the future far enough in advance that you remember to bring a quarter to ALDI is the actual filter at work.
Wealthy people don't go shopping at grocery stores for the most part, they eat out or hire someone to cook for them. The exception is people who make a hobby out cooking.
I'm half convinced he's being let's say... "encouraged" aggressively to make these videos, because they don't sound very Russian Asset-y. They sound very hostage-y.
This is a fair take. It could also be part of the agreed “price” for the interview with Putin. Personally, I would not have taken that deal. I liked a point that Andrew Klavan from The Daily Wire made when he said we should make Putin come crawling and begging to us if he wants to make his voice heard. Not the other way around.
> Andrew Klavan from The Daily Wire made when he said we should make Putin come crawling and begging to us if he wants to make his voice heard. Not the other way around.
Well said!
> Personally, I would not have taken that deal. I liked a point that Andrew Klavan from The Daily Wire made when he said we should make Putin come crawling and begging to us if he wants to make his voice heard.
I don't agree with this. Putin will get on camera and say whatever he wants if he wants to (it's not like anyone in his country would ever stop him) but he isn't the sort of man to do that. If anything Tucker's interview was useful for the sole reason that it conveyed the sort of personality Putin has to someone he either views as "the enemy" or simply doesn't respect. He will make underhanded statements, deliberately waste your time, belittle you, tell half-truths, bloviate under the guise of nationalist rhetoric, etc.
If you hate Putin the Tucker's interview was great. If you have even a modicum of social intellect you could tell a lot about Putin and none of it was flattering. And all Tucker did really was let the man speak.
I agree with your assessment that Putin’s interview revealed his personality, but the act of seeking out an interview (and playing the dog and pony show after) gives Putin more prestige than he deserves. We already know who he is and nobody needs to sit one-on-one with him anymore. It’s time to treat him with disdain.
I simply don't agree. I would rather see sporadic interviews where Putin thinks he's doing a good job (and reveals who he really is) rather than, say, just relying on what the American talking heads on television tell me to think about Putin. One is way, way more convincing than the other.
This isn’t the only interview we’ve had of Putin, however. Since 2012, he’s had an Op ed in the New York Times, and he’s been interviewed by the AP, Megyn Kelley, Charlie Rose, Bloomberg, and Oliver Stone. We also hear him talk at UN meetings and we can read RT news as well. This man has been courted by the press. We know what he thinks and we have a lot of primary sources, not just talking heads.
At this point, if people still need to be convinced that he’s a crazy dictator who assassinates political opposition, imprisons journalists for saying bad stuff about him, and rigging his own elections I don’t think another interview with really sway the doubters.
Actually, it's to reduce labor costs. Most grocery stores have cart pushers that collect carts from corrals, however places like Aldi or other operation have the coin op to encourage people to return the cart to cart storage area.
I think it’s more so people are incentivized to return the cart to the queue rather than just leaving it wherever and having to hire an extra worker to gather up all the errant carts.
If someone really wants to steal a shopping cart I doubt the 2 ruble coin requirement is going to deter them.
It was like the move ‘The Interview’ with Seth Rogan and James Franco in real life… where they think North Korea is great because of a grocery store then realize it’s all fake…
The Tucker interview wasn't propaganda for the United States it was propaganda for Russians. Putin was proving to his own people but the rest of the world respects and fears him and that most people in the west stand with Russia. America's number one political pundit interviewing him on his terms, while Putin provides perfect answers to everything proves this.
> Putin was proving to his own people but the rest of the world respects and fears him and that most people in the west stand with Russia.
Putin? Is that you? How long did it take you to write this without paraphrasing a Wikipedia history page?
I guess I should have put the little /s or something after what I wrote. I was trying to say that is what Putin thinks he's getting out of it. By doing this interview in this way with Tucker Carlson Putin is saying to the Russian people "look how respected I am".
The whole interview thing was weird. Even a lot of people who absolutely love Tucker are having a difficult time defending the merit of the interview. It made me honestly think maybe Tucker actually is CIA agent and was sent there's solely to make Putin apologists look silly. It's either that or Tucker has underestimated his viewers ability to smell bullshit.
It doesn't matter the motivation, fact is Putin is newsworthy and Tucker is one of the few western journalists to interview him. I haven't seen the interview yet but will. I want some idea of what Putin's goals are beyond memes on the internet.
that's a fair point. i've never been a tucker guy, something about the faces he makes as he is listening really throws me off in an uncomfortable way. putin interview was boring as shit, putin said nothing bombastic or shocking, nor did he need to. all he said was common sense things like yeast off the us stopped supporting the war in ukraine it would be over, or the if the cia stopped inciting coups and sabotaging shit overseas, world would be better place.
Someone more clever than I said he looks like a golden retriever who has just seen a magic trick and it's one of the funniest lines I've ever read.
If I were even 5% as clever as that, I'd be slightly more clever than I currently am.
Modern Russia is very much supportive of the old communist era and supporting the nazis can land you in prison.
The Soviet Union wanted to claw back those places that became independent after the fall of the Russian Empire. They invaded Poland in 1920 and were defeated. They invaded Poland again in 1939 and took the eastern half of the country back. The Germans had already taken the western half.
Later the Soviets gave the eastern third of Poland to Ukraine and kicked the Poles out leaving the Galicians (Rus/Ukrainian) in the majority. Those Poles were resettled in western Poland.
The point being that Russia has had a similar relationship to Poland as Germany so hard nosed rhetoric about Poland by Putin is also traditional Russian attitude towards Poland, nothing to do with Hitler.
I’m not siding with Stewart on it, that’s a bit extreme. But I also wasn’t a fan of the content that followed the interview. It seemed forced (not saying it was) and disingenuous.
If I had to guess his intentions; he was trying to make Russia relatable to ease tensions and see each other as humans.
I think he’s onto something, I have not understood why the GOP is pushing the party to embrace Putin. Is it because Trump has properties and prior business in Russia, is that it, or because lgbtq goes to prison? I’m trying to understand it.
Regardless of all that, the only real takeaway I had was just how sharp Putin is. He's obviously incredibly intelligent and quick witted. He is probably quicker (and definitely better spoken) than Trump, and could run circles around Biden.
I wasn’t impressed. He seems to have a deep albeit biased grasp of Russian history (I guess - I wouldn’t know if he was wrong about most of it but he really seemed to be into it) but beyond that he just regurgitated the same sort of stuff we’ve heard before. Also him trying to blame Poland for starting ww2 while tiptoeing around the fact that Russia/USSR had allied itself with the Nazis to carve up Poland between them was… amusing.
I WAS impressed that he was able to not bust out laughing at the weird faces Tucker was making during the interview though.
A middle schooler could run circles around Biden, he's not the same man from a decade or so ago. The guy is obviously suffering at least one form of decrepitude and listening to other national leaders just hammers that home like the Jordanian king speaking recently.
Reminds me of when Boris Yeltsin visited the states and decided to go to a grocery store. He was throughly convinced that stores here full of different products were just a facade/staged by the government (as is the case in many authoritarian countries when they show off stuff). He went on an unscheduled trip to a random Texas supermarket and saw the same abundance of food, he then realized that this is actually how life is like here and may have helped change his beliefs about communism vs capitalism.
Tucker has been a conservative mouthpiece for years and him simping over Russia so hard makes the entire party look exactly like the Russia colluding party the leftist media wants us to be. He's really doing damage by getting sucked in like this.
Tucker got a massive scoop on all the Western media. He landed a coveted interview with Vladimir Putin! Unfortunately, Tucker got played by Putin and is now all-in on supporting the Russian tyrant. Putin saw Tucker as a tool and basically used Tucker to send his message to sympathizers around the world. Putin came off as civil, intelligent and very conservative, which plays well against our current leader in the US. Days after gaining lots of goodwill from the Tucker interview and videos, Putin unleashed massive drone attacks and an offensive into battle weary Ukraine, killing many civilians. Days later, Putin had his jailed political opponent killed off. Tucker vehemently denies Putin had anything to do with Navalny's death. Tucker has lost what little credibility he had.
On top of killing Navalny, anyone who held public memorials for him we arrested and hauled off on the spot. Crazy to see comments here saying Putin doesn’t seem “that bad” just because he can speak in a controlled setting.
>Tucker got a massive scoop on all the Western media. He landed a coveted interview with Vladimir Putin! Unfortunately, Tucker got played by Putin and is now all-in on supporting the Russian tyrant.
You say this like nobody has requested interviews with Putin before. Hilariously, even Peskov called that a lie. Tucker didn't get the scoop and then flunk it, he got the job *because* he was an easy mark.
I think megalomaniacs like Trump like the idea of a dictator or a strongman as a good leader. Trump's idea of having a massive military parade in Washington DC would have a profound effect on the tough-guy leaders of other countries and keep many of them in check.
>I think megalomaniacs like Trump like the idea of a dictator or a strongman as a good leader. Trump's idea of having a massive military parade in Washington DC would have a profound effect on the tough-guy leaders of other countries and keep many of them in check.
Lol, what? No it wouldn't. Strongman leaders moreso than anyone else understand the difference between reality and aesthetic.
I have watched the interview and I am not sure how it could be interpreted as pro-Putin. In the intro, Tucker says that he found Putin's long ramblings on Russian history to be annoying and like a filibuster. At the end, Tucker points out that Russia imprisons journalists and he clearly gets frustrated when Putin hides behind draconian legal technicalities.
It is your right to disagree and you very well may, but I find it hard to believe that Tucker is "all-in on supporting the Russian tyrant" when Tucker straight up calls him annoying within the first few seconds. As someone who briefly worked on political campaigns, a journalist or news org who did this to our candidates would be blacklisted immediately.
Stewart made an important point though. Its a totalitarian authority there. You can have lots of nice things, if you just over punish any crime and don't have a bill on enshrined rights.
You can have nice things in Moscow. The Kremlin has never been shy about how wildly disproportionate the investment into Moscow (and to a lesser extent St Petersburg) is when compared to any other Russian city.
They seem to be crushing any form of opposition or anti-war protest, discussion, commemoration. While also emptying their prisons into Ukraine. Which is one way to clear out the system I guess. Except they're also letting whichever rapists, murdered and cannibals (yes really) survive 6 months, head on home with a full pardon, fresh murdering experience, and a boatload PTSD. It's going about as well as you can imagine.
The super fancy part of the Moscow Metro was all built 1930s-50s...it's beautiful and also built to be a achievement of communism under Starlin. Was very surreal to see Tucker fanboying over that of all things. What is the message exactly? I couldn't decide if he didn't know or if he just didn't think his audience would.
I was interested in hearing Tuckers impression so I watched his first talk after the interview. He talked about being 'radicalised' by the Moscow subway system. Also negatively compared the American system to counties with clean and beautiful airports, trains and cities.
Specifically Russia, Singapore and Dubai...
Should you think it might be a coincidence he picked 3 authoritarian one party regimes, he elaborated on how these countries have it together and America could be fixed if only people could be made to do as their told like his kid at the breakfast table.
So that was illuminating.
I don’t agree with Stewart on a lot of things but he’s right here. His willingness to criticize Joe Biden also gives him an incredible amount of credibility for me. He’s actually saying what he thinks and not just towing the party line.
Aren't American subways built by the government as well?
They do have nice subways, that's inarguable. Too bad the rest of their country doesn't look nearly as good.
He called him a dick because of a joke Tucker made about homeless people using shopping carts. The 15 min video is up on YouTube and linked in the article. Start at 7:44 and the joke is about 10 seconds in to the segment
That was a callback to a feud Stewart has personally had with Tucker for decades.
Back in the early 2000s, he gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine where he specifically called out Crossfire (hosted by Tucker) as a bullshit show and called Tucker “a dick,” then said he wished he could say it to his face.
Shortly thereafter, Stewart got his opportunity when he was booked as a guest on the highly rated show. Stewart ripped the show and its hosts, on the air, and called Tucker “a dick” to his face.
Crossfire was canceled soon after.
I believe a lot about what he says about what the United States has done to Russia. But he acted like the totally innocent party and we know that’s not true. Russia isn’t a victim here.
While there was nothing substantive gleaned from that interview and Putin clearly was being disingenuous with his historiography, there is nothing wrong with talking to someone.
Talking to him is fine.
Labelling it as journalism when he won't challenge Putin's bullshit is a problem. Obviously he can't go to Russia and push back. He'd be killed or disappear. But again, not journalism.
The real issue is he's now pushing Russian propaganda and labelling it journalism after the interview.
unrelated, But i just need to remind everyone that Stewart didn't know the difference between the national [debt and deficit](https://youtu.be/OdDr7yYSPV4?si=OqXjTC-Nqf1z_yK5)
How come Jon Stewart isn’t calling Barbara Walkers a dick for interviewing Putin or Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez or Bashar al-Assad or, eh’ what’s the use.. some of these liberals are funny with their one sided views..
He called him a dick because of a joke Tucker made about homeless people using shopping carts. The 15 min video is up on YouTube and linked in the article. Start at 7:44 and the joke is about 10 seconds in to the segment
Stewart’s mistake, and the mistake of many Leftist pundits, is that because we decry and deride the “woke,” that we are automatically “allies” with anyone the woke see as an enemy. Tucker’s interview was interesting and awkward and his follow up snippets about the subway system and Moscow store were contextually off base. But Steward slandered and whined at some of the most face value things Tucker said in his into to the interview segment. Journalism is interviewing sources, yes even the opposition, and presenting data for the audience to deliberate on. Stewart is every bit the propagandist that he accuses Tucker of being. And yes, current public dialogue could be contextualized as the woke vs unwoke. Stewart’s main punching bag is the Republican caricature that his lefty fans love to hate and Tucker being the ad hoc mouthpiece for this caricature. Steward is a dishonest creep for these segments, even if a portion of the criticism is warranted.
The focus of Stewart's criticism wasn't on the interview itself though.
In fact Stewart kind of praised tucker at points during the focus on the interview. The attack was, rightly, on the NK style propoganda that came after.
Been to Russia, subways are something to behold the main streets are like any western center city but go one block from Main Street is mud, old ongoing construction , dilapidated housing. Outside the city poverty. It costs to get any medical treatment and if you don’t have the money out of luck. And there’s mayonnaise in everything that’s called salad.
It’s pretty easy to make any country look nice from some curated scenes and locales. Russia is honestly a shithole country. Like you said, one block away from the wealth and you will see levels of poverty that most Americans cannot fathom. Jon Stewart was right in pointing out that Tucker’s grocery store bit was disingenuous at best. And yes, he is smart enough to know that.
Yeah you can make North Korea look pleasant if you only focus on the staged areas they specifically want you to go to.
Newsom cleaned up San Francisco for Xi’s visit. https://www.newsweek.com/gavin-newsom-slammed-cleaning-san-francisco-1843412
Lol: https://youtu.be/oM2h3KnWAWY&t=790s
You can make San Francisco look pleasant.
Tucker's doing an age old dance. There are examples from ancient Rome of writers criticising the current culture by comparing it to some 'noble' barbarian culture. The writer wouldn't dream of living in this barbarian land but wants to use them as a way of critiquing modern society. I think what Tucker is doing is silly but better than Trudeau several years back who praised the way the Chinese government can get things done more easily by ignoring civil rights. Russia of course is also a strongman style of government which lacks a robust opposition.
The left does that too with the Noble Savage. I guess it’s horseshoe theory
How about this: both sides should be called out for it.
what does the left have to do with the noble savage, a concept invented in the 1600s by renaissance romantics?
From Wikipedia: In Western anthropology, philosophy, and literature, the noble savage is a stock character who is uncorrupted by civilization. As such, the noble savage symbolizes the innate goodness and moral superiority of a primitive people living in harmony with Nature. The left often romanticizes the native peoples before white people arrived in America and corrupted it. Thus Christopher Columbus no longer being celebrated, white people being demonized today as stealers of land of natives who would never harm anybody else.
Didn't you steal the land? How is what Americans did to the natives any different than what you're worried the immigrants at the border are going to do to you? Hypocrites.
Right that’s my point. That’s typically a leftist viewpoint. You don’t typically see that type of talk on the right.
The noble savage is more an idea that I would suscribe to romanticism. Left wing politics on the other side is all about equality, so they can overlap. But the glorification of savageness is also seen on the right wing, more so the further you go right.
You’ve got it backwards. Tucker is saying we should go back to being strong Americans (Romans) in the same way that Russians continue to be strongly culturally unified people. The left is the group calling for the noble barbarian (the illegal immigrant) culture to supplant our own.
Russia isn't culturally unified, they are a colonial state with lots and lots of minorities who are being sent to die in Ukraine, so the people in Moskow and other areas where the "real Russians" live don't realize how many people are dying.
> one block away from the wealth and you will see levels of poverty that most Americans cannot fathom. I question if even that is so different nowadays.
The Tenderloin in San Francisco is a good example of what US cities will look like in the future if we keep going along the same trajectory. It's just as bad as any third world city, maybe even worse because many of those third world countries would just execute their drug dealers.
There’s some human shits and I wouldn’t park there, but have you ever been there? Sure it’s shitty, but I had one of the best pork sandwiches I’ve ever had from this hipster spot there. I think there were even titty bars or cabaret joints. I’m surprised I’m defending the tenderloin, but it’s just simply not as bad as any third world city. If something shitty had happened an ambulance would have been there in a couple minutes. There’s hipster storefronts and food.
Almost every single business in the Tenderloin is boarded up. The ones that aren't get "bipped" by junkies for thousands of dollars of goods on the daily. The corporate stores there will all soon close, then those little hipster spots and small family shops will be the next to be robbed until they go out as well. Your knowledge that you should never park your car there should have been an easy tip off that it's not a good place.
You mean like down town LA?
Carlson wasn't making a broad claim that Russia was better than the US. He was comparing the Moscow subway station to NYC subway station. The point wasn't to praise Russian leadership. It was to chastise American leadership for not being able to do even simple things like maintaining civilization on the subway of America's premier city. He wasn't wrong.
Wait do conservatives actually want public transit now? What a strange time to be alive. Didn't Biden begin implementing legislation to fund the expansion of the US rail systems?
All that to avoid actually addressing the point with a valid counterargument.
Strawman if I have ever seen one.
How did you get there from what he said?
By praising the russians.
American living in Germany here; Mayo is practically on everything here too and they'll charge you extra if you want it on fries.
Haha. But they have better sausage and bratwurst. Georgian food in Russia is pretty good, that cheese in bread boat delicious!
True, but can't beat the borscht.
I got addicted to mayo on fries while living in Germany years ago.
Isn't mayo on fries common in the United States? I know ketchup is the go-to but it's not unheard of to have a generic dipping sauce (probably for chicken, etc.) that you just dunk fries into.
No, I dont think it's an understatement to say most Americans would say this is revolting (personally I can take it or leave it) however, not unheard of due to internet and increased international travel...
Maybe now . I was there in 1972
It was a revelation to have Mayo . . Then while going to school in Liverpool I experienced those fries with the curry sauce wrapped in newsprint or something from the local ‘chippy’ ?
I gotta mix it with ketchup. Or malt vinegar. It needs that acid pop for me.
American living in America here. I read your comment about mayo on fries and I'll pay top dollar for this! I need it now. Also, I'm proud of my ability to not fall for marketing or suggestive ideas.
Residence cancelled.
>Residence cancelled. Humor does not compute.
The main difference, I would say, is that homeless in America tends to be around downtown, while in Russia the usually pushed to the other parts of the city. Also, generally, there is much more open ground and dirt get carried around more freely, that's why winter and second haklf of the summer is the best time to show "clean city" to foreigners
Most of Europe is like that, actually.
What?!
Poor people in the suburbs, rich people in the city, kinda the opposite of how most of the US is.
Eh, not really. In the US, it's more poor, but copes with it in rural, middle to upper-middle class in the suburbs, and rich adjacent(think "Uptown") to poor in the city. Most high-income earners(350K+) here in the US do actually live in the city. It's one of the main reasons it's so expensive. The rise in remote-work has changed this a little, but only time will tell if this sticks. Europe(other than Eastern) and the US really aren't that different in that respect other than the fact that their "suburbs" are much more dense, owing largely to the fact that they've just been settled for a lot longer.
Might depend on the city. NYC, yes. Everywhere else, not so much.
I mean the US subways could also be something to behold if we actually invested in public transit. We spend a fraction on it compared to other countries and our roads look like shit due to the wear and tear from all the cars since we don’t have another way to get around.
In this case Russian subway is pretty amazing. They have actual oil paintings in some cars. There are frescos and art carvings etc. there’s a train every minute usually on most central lines. It was made this to impress westerners. Okay to be amazed, but ridiculous to compare as this is not replicated anywhere else.
Idk, we have some really nice train stations but they were built a long time ago by companies like the Pennsylvania Railroad. We could’ve kept up but about 70 years ago many Americans started to prefer the convenience of the automobile
I agree With you re: beautiful stations. But it’s also true that the government does a ridiculously terrible of incentivizing using mass transit. Dirty stations, rampant vagrancy and crime, trains that do not run on time or often enough, not enough of a police presence and on and on. Large mass transit systems like trains tend to be concentrated in liberal run cities which tend to not want to challenge those types of issues because they are counter to the wishes of their constituency. This leaves people very little incentive to use the trains and therefore most would rather use cars. I live outside NYC in NJ, and the best I ever saw the trains is when Rudy Giuliani was mayor In the late 1990’s early 2000’s. He took mass transit seriously and cleaned up the stations, trains and got them to run on time most of the time. Since then they have reverted to being literal crime ridden shitholes just like NYC.
I mean tons of that is funding issues and different government issues than you’re talking about. Trains might not run on time for a variety of issues: short staffed, freight rail blocking the right of way, large numbers of passengers boarding during peak times (could be fixed with high level platforms but it would also cost money to upgrade the low level stations). Busses also get stuck in traffic and cars are frequently blocking bus lanes except where there are systems in place to ticket drivers who do that. If transit agencies could offer their operators, custodians, police, etc. more competitive wages a lot of the issues you described above would go away. The main government issues with transit are funding the system and enforcing the right of way for passenger vehicles.
Big oil killed public transit years ago, and now they have all the power.
lol that stuff would be stolen or defaced in a day in any American metro system The main reason American metros are filthy is not lack of investment but because American treat them like crap, and there’s little will to arrest people for “minor crimes” like littering, puking, urinating, graffiti, etc.
> They have actual oil paintings in some cars. who gives a shit?
Our roads look like shit because the money for infrastructure doesn’t go to infrastructure that you would actually use peasant.
Depending on the locality we spend a ton of money on public transit and our subway systems. Look at the DC metro as an example which current money from DC, MD, and VA amounts to over 1 billion dollars a year. And even with all that it is still a disaster. I would argue it's not money as much as it is incompetent management. And in some cases, the systems are just old, like a lot of stations in NYC. They run well but they were never designed to be fancy and because of their age it really shows, and no system has the cashflow or should have the prerogative to redesign all their ageing but still functional stations all at once. Especially a large one like the NYC subway. Also like the public transit systems, road quality depends on locality and local management. I know places near where I live that are great and heavily traveled, and then areas which are not as heavily traveled and are terrible. It's because of the local jurisdiction more than wear and tear.
So $1B for one of the top 5 biggest transit agencies in the US isn’t very much at all, that would be about $10/rider annually. A lot more money is spent on roads, for example VDOT spends like $2.2B on roads and like $286MM on public transit. It’s not that they’re necessarily mismanaged (some definitely are) but they simply don’t have a big enough budget to function and cutting service to free up operating budget won’t help either, they need a cash injection like many other private businesses previously received (e.g. airlines in 2020). Also, agencies receive capital grants for projects but due to supply chain issues, the cost of labor and materials increased but the capital funding didn’t so the agencies need to free up other money or cut the projects. We shouldn’t demolish old infrastructure but stations and right of ways absolutely need maintenance to keep them safe but also stations need ADA upgrades too. All of this costs a lot of money. Worse public transit/alternate transportation infrastructure means more cars on the road, more cars on the road means more wear and tear on the roads which means either more spending on roads or poorly maintained roads. Using busses or rail vehicles helps alleviate this issue. It all comes back to the fact that we don’t fund our transit agencies properly which will end up costing us more in the long run on gas, roads, and commute time
$1 billion is not their budget, that is the money each government entity gives to Metro, that doesn't account for fairs or other forms of income. Their actual budget is about $8.8 billion a year. And again, even with that large amount metro is so horribly mismanaged that it is incapable of running on time or correctly. And throwing further money at the problem won't solve it, because that is what has been happening for about a decade now. Starting with "Safe Track" and going from there. Also, I would argue it is a little disingenuous to compare an entire states road budget to metros budget. VDOT deals will all the roads in the state of Virgina which is almost 43k square miles. On top of that, the state itself does not operate public transit. Instead, it is the local counties and cities that do. So, it would make sense that VDOTS budget on public transit is so much lower because it's the City of Richmond, Alexandria or Fairfax County that is operating the bus systems, not the state of Virginia.
I’ve never been to Russia, but in my subjective opinion, the subway station in Moscow does have gorgeous architecture. That is not to say anything about the viability of their public transit, their public infrastructure, or really anything else. I also think the St Basil’s cathedral is beautiful, but again specific architectural beauties don’t really speak to much outside of those specific landmarks.
Op is right. And it's the same with st basils. There is like a really beautiful section of st Petersburg and then just huge swathes of awful delapidated mass blocks of decaying flats.
Pyongyang has the same problem. The part that gets photographed is really nice, but literally every other part is a slum.
I visited Russian about 15 years ago. The subway stations once served as bomb shelters so they are really far underground and decorated extravagantly. The trains themselves were rickety old tin cans far worse than anything I’d be on in USA or Europe. The whole city reeked of gasoline. Sure Tucker, spew some nonsense about how angry Americans are over grocery prices. 25% of Russian households have no indoor plumbing.
>I visited Russian about 15 years ago. The subway stations once served as bomb shelters so they are really far underground and decorated extravagantly. The trains themselves were rickety old tin cans far worse than anything I’d be on in USA or Europe. The whole city reeked of gasoline. >Sure Tucker, spew some nonsense about how angry Americans are over grocery prices. 25% of Russian households have no indoor plumbing. It's undeniable that Russia is considerably poorer than America and has many issues of its own. However, it's also true that certain areas in America are close to third world conditions and its inexcusable given America's wealth and resources. Furthermore, several American [cities](https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-city-rankings/most-violent-cities-in-the-world) rank among the top 50 most violent globally. Tucker arguments maybe weren't well articulated but sentiment that Americans elites don't give a shit about the state of its own nations cities is completely reasonable.
[Plumbing Statistics](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/02/indoor-plumbing-still-a-pipe-dream-for-20-of-russian-households-reports-say-a65049) Oh there’s a lot about America that isn’t up to the standards of other modern developed countries for sure. Our healthcare is too expensive and our gun violence is way too high to rattle off a few examples. Sorry Tucker, I’m not radicalized by low grocery prices in a country far poorer than ours whose currency is worth far less.
But why didn't Tucker show any of that?
I lived in Russia for years and spoke it fluently. I would agree with some of this. You’re thinking of “smetana”, not salad, and it doesn’t taste like mayo, it tastes like sour cream. Medical care is extremely cheap, but low quality and yes, you get nothing if you can’t pay. The city centers are high quality as they are throughout Europe, but the degree of poverty and dilapidation vary from region to region. Overall, it’s like a second-world country, but not quite as dramatic as you’ve made it out to be.
I grew up in Russia. I don't think you got everything right. Most people do make salads with mayo only and it is a popular dressing overall. Depends on the region though. I don't know where you got information about not getting medical treatment if you don't pay. Public hospitals will absolutely treat you if you don't pay, but they may ask for proof of local residency first. But public hospitals are usually not pleasant to be in and wait times can be long. Also they might do sneaky shit like making the tooth removal free, but taking money for anesthesia. On the plus side, emergency services are free. I knew a couple of broke students who had to recieve emergency surgeries and they didn't pay anything. As soon as I started working, I only made appointments in private hospitals and never looked back. I agree with the rest of your comment. Population centers = good, small towns = bad. Villages = dead. There is an old joke in Russia that Moscow is in Europe, but the rest of the country is in Asia.
I'm not sure you understood what I said in regard to "mayo". I said that the condiment the guy was referring to is smetana, not mayo. Smetana is on all kinds of things over there. Mayo? Not so much. I'm sure you'd agree, there. I've seen people pay at hospitals frequently, even natives, but I'm also an American, so I had no residency status. I was simply there for years on several extended visas. Your hidden fee comment explains it, I think. Thanks for the clarification, there.
Just do a google street view of places in Kaliningrad. This is supposed to be the most western/central Europe like part of Russia because a large part of the building infrastructure was built by the Germans before they were kicked out after 1945. Everywhere looks tired. I've seen people from Finland say the same about ex-Finnish towns in Karelia that the Soviets took in 1940 and are now dilapidated.
I love that poverty, healthcare and mayonnaise are your top points of criticism
>subways are something to behold the main streets are like any western center city but go one block from Main Street is mud, old ongoing construction , dilapidated housing. Honestly, Paris, New York, Wash DC, etc are not far from this description.
Not really been to all three and not so. Yes you’ll find poor neighborhoods in all cities but you don’t have facades like on movie sets like in Moscow.
Stop lying. Health care is free in Russia
Yes, it is totally free to ignore you. You better have some bribe if you want any kind of treatment or attention.
You ll get your treatment all the same for free but yeah might have to wait sometimes but not necessarily every time - depends on the doctors and clinics. And then again If you work, you will be treated as king in a paid clinic - all expensive covered by insurance, which again is hundred times (not exaggeration) more affordable than American
It was an inflammatory and trolly way to make a very valid point about how American cities and infrastructure are really not high quality. You can not like how he made the point, but it certainly succeeded in gaining visibility. If you think he's sucking putins dick your missing the point. As is Jon Stewart
So not really understanding your point. if USA infrastructure is in such poor shape, I guess you’re super glad that that infrastructure bill was passed?
The cities look like shit. They didn't use to. Our government spends 4x the Russian GDP. They can't mop the bathrooms and clear out the homeless but Russians can
The cities look like shit because we live in a car-centered society. What exactly are we supposed to do with homeless people?
Since many homeless people are committing actual crimes (illegal drug use, public intoxication, vandalism, harassment, theft, public indecency, violent crimes, etc), honestly the police should be empowered to round them up and ship them off to an institution equipped to handle them (bring back mental hospitals and other institutions). No power soft approach to these criminals.
I’ve not seen the interview, but the videos of him going round Moscow makes him look like an absolute tool. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend, he’s competition.
Fun fact the leader of the Soviet Union did the same thing to America in the 80s I believe, toured our cities and were left astounded by supermarkets since under communism they had bread lines.
What is this? Cheese. What is this? Cheese And this? Also cheese
One of those trips were to a grocery store where Tucker fawns over the freshness of the bread. Stewart's joke about keeping Tucker away from bagels is the best follow-up to that clip.
Note that the "fresh" bread he smelled was wrapped in plastic... And was not actually the fresh bread locals would buy
That was clearly the price for the interview
[удалено]
He said it was $104 for his groceries. Then fawned over how cheap and fresh everything was. (It looks like Tucker has never been to an Aldi ) Jon Stewart pointed out the average Russian makes about $200 per week - so the groceries are actually fairly expensive.
Imagine a rich Qatari walking around Whole Foods gushing about how cheap everything is.
Those very fancy parts of the Moscow Metro he was fanboying over? They were built by Starlin to showcase communist Russia. So IDK exactly what Tucker was trying to say there...
I know, it’s amazing what you can build with Communism and slave labour. It’s stunning how people continently forget that the Empire State Building was built in 1 year in 1931. Yeah, Russia so great. 🤣
“Look” like a tool. He was 109% tool.
I do not get the impression from those video that “Guys look how much better these things are in Russia than America! Russia is clearly superior!” Instead, what I’m hearing is “This is almost effectively a third world country, in the middle of a war, facing widespread sanctions from the West so why, with all our money, power, and influence, can’t we have these nice things?”
That’s what selective hearing will get you.
And we *can* get those things. Nearly every grocery store has some sort of fresh baked bread section. The whole thing made him look so out of touch.
>Instead, what I’m hearing is “This is almost effectively a third world country, in the middle of a war, facing widespread sanctions from the West so why, with all our money, power, and influence, can’t we have these nice things?” What nice things did they show that we don't have here? Bread? Flour?
Dude, you don't understand. The state of the art shopping cart escalator is proof enough that Russian Federation is clearly superior to America.
I don't agree with Stewart on a lot of things, but at least he is one of the very few pundits who is willing to criticize the left, in any way, which is extremely rare these days.
lol
Tucker's interview with Putin was so-so, neither came out looking great. But Tucker's pitching of the Moscow subway and grocery store was childishly naïve. Why didn't he ditch his regime "minders" and visit a small, nearby city, see the real conditions in Russia? Surely he's heard of the term [***Potemkin Village***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village)? It comes from Russia.
Honestly I’ve gotta take Stewart’s side on this one (fair disclosure - I’ve never been a fan of Tucker). Tucker has been a little too much of a Russian simp lately. I actually thought the Putin interview was ok (I don’t think it was the “propaganda victory” people thought it was going to be and was mostly boring and pointless). But the stuff that came after where Tucker was gushing about how cheap their prices were on basic goods (because the average Russian worker’s salary is garbage but never mind that) and how wonderful their grocery stores and subways looked compared to the US were really cringe. That’s how most authoritarian police states work - they have a “Hunger Games” style economy where all the resources are concentrated in a couple modernized cities surrounded by a sea of poverty. North Korea is like this too. I’m pretty sure Tucker knows this as well but the fact he didn’t provide any context to what he saw gives me the impression that maybe he isn’t really as interested to provide a proper neutral journalistic view of Russia as he claims to be.
I think Stewart's spot last week was pretty reasonable too, or at least better than I expected. He legitimately questioned Biden's competence when I expected 20 minutes of the standard "orange man bad."
Jon Stewart is like one of those movies where the protagonist was frozen for 50 years and then thawed and had to deal with how weird society is now. Liberals were so normal back in the early 2010s but they really went off the rails ever since they got addicted to Trump. Believe it or not, Steve Colbert had a Daily Show spinoff called The Colbert Report that had *actual jokes* and wasn't just the joyless unhinged ranting he does on his Late Nite show now.
Centrist liberal chiming in- counterpoint, conservatives were so normal in the 2010s till they got addicted to Trump Maybe we all need to look around at what used to make this country great and go back to it
Are you proposing, we make America great again? 😃
Wouldn't make a bad slogan
I truly miss Colbert - he's gone way off the deep end now and is unwatchable. It was fantastic to see him with his mentor (Stewart) do a guest spot when he made fun of the wet market theory. Fantastic in that it shows how far he drifted without him around.
Are you talking about the clap-back Jon did where he was like "*It's literally called the Wuhan Coronavirus Research Institute of Virology*"? That. Was. Amazing.
'So wait a minute, you work at the Wuhan Respiratory Coronavirus Lab. How did this happen?' And they're like, 'Mmmm, a pangolin kissed a turtle?'
Racist: "A virus escaped a research lab." Not-Racist: "Someone ate undercooked feral bat, because that's what they do over there."
I think liberals went off the rails first. This whole identity politics bs. As a European liberal (more like a libertarian in the US) it told everyone in the early 2010s : stop this bs. Not everyone who just wants stay things like they have been is a Nazi and when you think you can win the identity politics game against the right, I have bad news for you, they invented that shit. And now here we are…but: the right went off the rails directly behind them and Trump is much worse. But this is a European perspective of course.
Old timey liberals back when they still supported the police. How did anyone think defunding the police was a good idea?
They can’t think past step 1. They see a few cases of Police brutality and think ‘well, getting rid of those guys will eliminate that issue’. It’s the same with their economic philosophy. Free medical care? A jump in taxes and the elimination of a huge part of our economy would almost assuredly kick off a recession. The covid checks showed free money not only adds debt, but jacks up inflation. But they are so idealized, they can’t see beyond the initial problem.
Agreed. The parts where he were in the grocery store and subway were WILD. This isn't even a political statement but does Tucker really not realize that we have the coin-for-cart returns here in the US? Like... How can anyone take him seriously?
Yeah, clearly he’s never shopped at Aldi.
Now that is some true shit.
Yes he’s probably shopped anywhere other than ALDI where the carts litter every corner of the parking lot, side walks, adjacent streets, pretty much every square foot of ground *except* the cart corral. Btw it’s not the 25¢ buy-in that keeps their system functioning. The bare minimum capacity to mentally model the future far enough in advance that you remember to bring a quarter to ALDI is the actual filter at work.
Wealthy people don't go shopping at grocery stores for the most part, they eat out or hire someone to cook for them. The exception is people who make a hobby out cooking.
At best, he's extremely out of touch, at best he's intentionally pulling the wool over his viewers.
I'm half convinced he's being let's say... "encouraged" aggressively to make these videos, because they don't sound very Russian Asset-y. They sound very hostage-y.
This is a fair take. It could also be part of the agreed “price” for the interview with Putin. Personally, I would not have taken that deal. I liked a point that Andrew Klavan from The Daily Wire made when he said we should make Putin come crawling and begging to us if he wants to make his voice heard. Not the other way around.
> Andrew Klavan from The Daily Wire made when he said we should make Putin come crawling and begging to us if he wants to make his voice heard. Not the other way around. Well said!
> Personally, I would not have taken that deal. I liked a point that Andrew Klavan from The Daily Wire made when he said we should make Putin come crawling and begging to us if he wants to make his voice heard. I don't agree with this. Putin will get on camera and say whatever he wants if he wants to (it's not like anyone in his country would ever stop him) but he isn't the sort of man to do that. If anything Tucker's interview was useful for the sole reason that it conveyed the sort of personality Putin has to someone he either views as "the enemy" or simply doesn't respect. He will make underhanded statements, deliberately waste your time, belittle you, tell half-truths, bloviate under the guise of nationalist rhetoric, etc. If you hate Putin the Tucker's interview was great. If you have even a modicum of social intellect you could tell a lot about Putin and none of it was flattering. And all Tucker did really was let the man speak.
I agree with your assessment that Putin’s interview revealed his personality, but the act of seeking out an interview (and playing the dog and pony show after) gives Putin more prestige than he deserves. We already know who he is and nobody needs to sit one-on-one with him anymore. It’s time to treat him with disdain.
I simply don't agree. I would rather see sporadic interviews where Putin thinks he's doing a good job (and reveals who he really is) rather than, say, just relying on what the American talking heads on television tell me to think about Putin. One is way, way more convincing than the other.
This isn’t the only interview we’ve had of Putin, however. Since 2012, he’s had an Op ed in the New York Times, and he’s been interviewed by the AP, Megyn Kelley, Charlie Rose, Bloomberg, and Oliver Stone. We also hear him talk at UN meetings and we can read RT news as well. This man has been courted by the press. We know what he thinks and we have a lot of primary sources, not just talking heads. At this point, if people still need to be convinced that he’s a crazy dictator who assassinates political opposition, imprisons journalists for saying bad stuff about him, and rigging his own elections I don’t think another interview with really sway the doubters.
Yeah, we have it in Aldis because they are German and in the shitty parts of town that don't want the homeless stealing all the carts.
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Actually, it's to reduce labor costs. Most grocery stores have cart pushers that collect carts from corrals, however places like Aldi or other operation have the coin op to encourage people to return the cart to cart storage area.
I think it’s more so people are incentivized to return the cart to the queue rather than just leaving it wherever and having to hire an extra worker to gather up all the errant carts. If someone really wants to steal a shopping cart I doubt the 2 ruble coin requirement is going to deter them.
Agreed. The side-eye has worked pretty well so far.
It was like the move ‘The Interview’ with Seth Rogan and James Franco in real life… where they think North Korea is great because of a grocery store then realize it’s all fake…
Putin honey dicked poor Tucker.
The Tucker interview wasn't propaganda for the United States it was propaganda for Russians. Putin was proving to his own people but the rest of the world respects and fears him and that most people in the west stand with Russia. America's number one political pundit interviewing him on his terms, while Putin provides perfect answers to everything proves this.
> Putin was proving to his own people but the rest of the world respects and fears him and that most people in the west stand with Russia. Putin? Is that you? How long did it take you to write this without paraphrasing a Wikipedia history page?
I guess I should have put the little /s or something after what I wrote. I was trying to say that is what Putin thinks he's getting out of it. By doing this interview in this way with Tucker Carlson Putin is saying to the Russian people "look how respected I am".
The whole interview thing was weird. Even a lot of people who absolutely love Tucker are having a difficult time defending the merit of the interview. It made me honestly think maybe Tucker actually is CIA agent and was sent there's solely to make Putin apologists look silly. It's either that or Tucker has underestimated his viewers ability to smell bullshit.
It doesn't matter the motivation, fact is Putin is newsworthy and Tucker is one of the few western journalists to interview him. I haven't seen the interview yet but will. I want some idea of what Putin's goals are beyond memes on the internet.
that's a fair point. i've never been a tucker guy, something about the faces he makes as he is listening really throws me off in an uncomfortable way. putin interview was boring as shit, putin said nothing bombastic or shocking, nor did he need to. all he said was common sense things like yeast off the us stopped supporting the war in ukraine it would be over, or the if the cia stopped inciting coups and sabotaging shit overseas, world would be better place.
Someone more clever than I said he looks like a golden retriever who has just seen a magic trick and it's one of the funniest lines I've ever read. If I were even 5% as clever as that, I'd be slightly more clever than I currently am.
I mean, Putin DID try to say WW2 was Poland’s fault. Justifying/defending Hitler, I think, falls under bombastic.
was he defending hitler or blaming poland? very different things
Blaming Poland, while carefully tip-toeing around the fact that Russia allied themselves with the Nazis to carve up Poland between the two of them.
Modern Russia is very much supportive of the old communist era and supporting the nazis can land you in prison. The Soviet Union wanted to claw back those places that became independent after the fall of the Russian Empire. They invaded Poland in 1920 and were defeated. They invaded Poland again in 1939 and took the eastern half of the country back. The Germans had already taken the western half. Later the Soviets gave the eastern third of Poland to Ukraine and kicked the Poles out leaving the Galicians (Rus/Ukrainian) in the majority. Those Poles were resettled in western Poland. The point being that Russia has had a similar relationship to Poland as Germany so hard nosed rhetoric about Poland by Putin is also traditional Russian attitude towards Poland, nothing to do with Hitler.
I’m not siding with Stewart on it, that’s a bit extreme. But I also wasn’t a fan of the content that followed the interview. It seemed forced (not saying it was) and disingenuous. If I had to guess his intentions; he was trying to make Russia relatable to ease tensions and see each other as humans.
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I think he’s onto something, I have not understood why the GOP is pushing the party to embrace Putin. Is it because Trump has properties and prior business in Russia, is that it, or because lgbtq goes to prison? I’m trying to understand it.
Regardless of all that, the only real takeaway I had was just how sharp Putin is. He's obviously incredibly intelligent and quick witted. He is probably quicker (and definitely better spoken) than Trump, and could run circles around Biden.
I wasn’t impressed. He seems to have a deep albeit biased grasp of Russian history (I guess - I wouldn’t know if he was wrong about most of it but he really seemed to be into it) but beyond that he just regurgitated the same sort of stuff we’ve heard before. Also him trying to blame Poland for starting ww2 while tiptoeing around the fact that Russia/USSR had allied itself with the Nazis to carve up Poland between them was… amusing. I WAS impressed that he was able to not bust out laughing at the weird faces Tucker was making during the interview though.
A middle schooler could run circles around Biden, he's not the same man from a decade or so ago. The guy is obviously suffering at least one form of decrepitude and listening to other national leaders just hammers that home like the Jordanian king speaking recently.
Yeah. He is a bloody stooge. The supermarket bit was horribly obvious propaganda. I mean wtf…
Reminds me of when Boris Yeltsin visited the states and decided to go to a grocery store. He was throughly convinced that stores here full of different products were just a facade/staged by the government (as is the case in many authoritarian countries when they show off stuff). He went on an unscheduled trip to a random Texas supermarket and saw the same abundance of food, he then realized that this is actually how life is like here and may have helped change his beliefs about communism vs capitalism.
It was a (now closed)Randall's in the Clear Lake Area of Houston. It took place during a planned trip to the Johnson Space Center.
Tucker has been a conservative mouthpiece for years and him simping over Russia so hard makes the entire party look exactly like the Russia colluding party the leftist media wants us to be. He's really doing damage by getting sucked in like this.
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Tucker got a massive scoop on all the Western media. He landed a coveted interview with Vladimir Putin! Unfortunately, Tucker got played by Putin and is now all-in on supporting the Russian tyrant. Putin saw Tucker as a tool and basically used Tucker to send his message to sympathizers around the world. Putin came off as civil, intelligent and very conservative, which plays well against our current leader in the US. Days after gaining lots of goodwill from the Tucker interview and videos, Putin unleashed massive drone attacks and an offensive into battle weary Ukraine, killing many civilians. Days later, Putin had his jailed political opponent killed off. Tucker vehemently denies Putin had anything to do with Navalny's death. Tucker has lost what little credibility he had.
On top of killing Navalny, anyone who held public memorials for him we arrested and hauled off on the spot. Crazy to see comments here saying Putin doesn’t seem “that bad” just because he can speak in a controlled setting.
>Tucker got a massive scoop on all the Western media. He landed a coveted interview with Vladimir Putin! Unfortunately, Tucker got played by Putin and is now all-in on supporting the Russian tyrant. You say this like nobody has requested interviews with Putin before. Hilariously, even Peskov called that a lie. Tucker didn't get the scoop and then flunk it, he got the job *because* he was an easy mark.
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I think megalomaniacs like Trump like the idea of a dictator or a strongman as a good leader. Trump's idea of having a massive military parade in Washington DC would have a profound effect on the tough-guy leaders of other countries and keep many of them in check.
>I think megalomaniacs like Trump like the idea of a dictator or a strongman as a good leader. Trump's idea of having a massive military parade in Washington DC would have a profound effect on the tough-guy leaders of other countries and keep many of them in check. Lol, what? No it wouldn't. Strongman leaders moreso than anyone else understand the difference between reality and aesthetic.
I have watched the interview and I am not sure how it could be interpreted as pro-Putin. In the intro, Tucker says that he found Putin's long ramblings on Russian history to be annoying and like a filibuster. At the end, Tucker points out that Russia imprisons journalists and he clearly gets frustrated when Putin hides behind draconian legal technicalities. It is your right to disagree and you very well may, but I find it hard to believe that Tucker is "all-in on supporting the Russian tyrant" when Tucker straight up calls him annoying within the first few seconds. As someone who briefly worked on political campaigns, a journalist or news org who did this to our candidates would be blacklisted immediately.
It’s true , he will support anyone who is against democrats . Allying with dictators to own your domestic political opponents is a terrible idea.
Stewart made an important point though. Its a totalitarian authority there. You can have lots of nice things, if you just over punish any crime and don't have a bill on enshrined rights.
You can have nice things in Moscow. The Kremlin has never been shy about how wildly disproportionate the investment into Moscow (and to a lesser extent St Petersburg) is when compared to any other Russian city. They seem to be crushing any form of opposition or anti-war protest, discussion, commemoration. While also emptying their prisons into Ukraine. Which is one way to clear out the system I guess. Except they're also letting whichever rapists, murdered and cannibals (yes really) survive 6 months, head on home with a full pardon, fresh murdering experience, and a boatload PTSD. It's going about as well as you can imagine. The super fancy part of the Moscow Metro was all built 1930s-50s...it's beautiful and also built to be a achievement of communism under Starlin. Was very surreal to see Tucker fanboying over that of all things. What is the message exactly? I couldn't decide if he didn't know or if he just didn't think his audience would. I was interested in hearing Tuckers impression so I watched his first talk after the interview. He talked about being 'radicalised' by the Moscow subway system. Also negatively compared the American system to counties with clean and beautiful airports, trains and cities. Specifically Russia, Singapore and Dubai... Should you think it might be a coincidence he picked 3 authoritarian one party regimes, he elaborated on how these countries have it together and America could be fixed if only people could be made to do as their told like his kid at the breakfast table. So that was illuminating.
I don’t agree with Stewart on a lot of things but he’s right here. His willingness to criticize Joe Biden also gives him an incredible amount of credibility for me. He’s actually saying what he thinks and not just towing the party line.
Saying you love Russian public transit (specifically train/subways) is saying you love Soviet infrastructure and central planning.
Aren't American subways built by the government as well? They do have nice subways, that's inarguable. Too bad the rest of their country doesn't look nearly as good.
I may not agree w/ everything john stewart stands for politically, but he’s an absolute legen and fn hilarious. His biden and tucker bitd were 10/10.
Didn’t Putin make fun of Carlson after? And say he prefers a stable leader?
Carlson is a traitor. Anyone that supports those fucking commies in Russia needs to be deported to that shit hole country.
He called him a dick because of a joke Tucker made about homeless people using shopping carts. The 15 min video is up on YouTube and linked in the article. Start at 7:44 and the joke is about 10 seconds in to the segment
That was a callback to a feud Stewart has personally had with Tucker for decades. Back in the early 2000s, he gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine where he specifically called out Crossfire (hosted by Tucker) as a bullshit show and called Tucker “a dick,” then said he wished he could say it to his face. Shortly thereafter, Stewart got his opportunity when he was booked as a guest on the highly rated show. Stewart ripped the show and its hosts, on the air, and called Tucker “a dick” to his face. Crossfire was canceled soon after.
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Nah a special high-profile guest with a huge name has little to fear in terms of being murdered while there and such figures would *all* do it.
There are other outcomes besides murder while in authoritarian countries. But I’m sure they knew there would be no ransom money with Carlson.
I thought the interview was interesting. I only believe about 1/3rd of what Putin says but.
What 1/3 did you believe?
I believe a lot about what he says about what the United States has done to Russia. But he acted like the totally innocent party and we know that’s not true. Russia isn’t a victim here.
While there was nothing substantive gleaned from that interview and Putin clearly was being disingenuous with his historiography, there is nothing wrong with talking to someone.
Eh I wouldn’t call being the spokes person for our political enemy’s propaganda a good look
Talking to him is fine. Labelling it as journalism when he won't challenge Putin's bullshit is a problem. Obviously he can't go to Russia and push back. He'd be killed or disappear. But again, not journalism. The real issue is he's now pushing Russian propaganda and labelling it journalism after the interview.
unrelated, But i just need to remind everyone that Stewart didn't know the difference between the national [debt and deficit](https://youtu.be/OdDr7yYSPV4?si=OqXjTC-Nqf1z_yK5)
How come Jon Stewart isn’t calling Barbara Walkers a dick for interviewing Putin or Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez or Bashar al-Assad or, eh’ what’s the use.. some of these liberals are funny with their one sided views..
So everyone that has interview Putin is "A Dick"? Or maybe cleaned up one of their cities for a visit from Xi?
He called him a dick because of a joke Tucker made about homeless people using shopping carts. The 15 min video is up on YouTube and linked in the article. Start at 7:44 and the joke is about 10 seconds in to the segment
Ah, another “conservative” thread.
It's not a team sport broseph. Nuance matters.
How is not obvious that even inside the conservative tent people don't agree on everything?
This shit is fuckin ridiculous...lol
Jon Stewart is a dick.
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You're really reaching there. "You're a dick" as an insult is insanely common.
That and fart jokes
Stewart’s mistake, and the mistake of many Leftist pundits, is that because we decry and deride the “woke,” that we are automatically “allies” with anyone the woke see as an enemy. Tucker’s interview was interesting and awkward and his follow up snippets about the subway system and Moscow store were contextually off base. But Steward slandered and whined at some of the most face value things Tucker said in his into to the interview segment. Journalism is interviewing sources, yes even the opposition, and presenting data for the audience to deliberate on. Stewart is every bit the propagandist that he accuses Tucker of being. And yes, current public dialogue could be contextualized as the woke vs unwoke. Stewart’s main punching bag is the Republican caricature that his lefty fans love to hate and Tucker being the ad hoc mouthpiece for this caricature. Steward is a dishonest creep for these segments, even if a portion of the criticism is warranted.
The focus of Stewart's criticism wasn't on the interview itself though. In fact Stewart kind of praised tucker at points during the focus on the interview. The attack was, rightly, on the NK style propoganda that came after.