Tucker Carlson is fielding criticism from both sides of the political aisle over a recent Russian video posted on his network—and no, not the one where he interviews President Vladimir Putin. Filed in the category “TC Shorts,” the nearly four-minute video shows Carlson and his crew taking a trip to a Russian grocery store.
“So a long standing feature, maybe the longest standing feature of Cold War propaganda in the West was the Soviet grocery store,” he says in the video. “No products, no choices. Shoddily made things. And it wasn't actually propaganda. It was real. And you can look up the pictures on the internet if you want. So we thought it would be interesting to take a look at a contemporary, modern day, 2024 Russian grocery store two years into sanctions.”
Carlson appears impressed by the coin system to take out a grocery cart (used by many stores in the U.S.), the shopping cart escalator (also a feature in many U.S. stores), but most of all by the cost. He purchases staples he thinks a family would need for a week’s worth of food and is stunned to learn it doesn't cost around the $400 his team guessed it would be, but was a fraction of that at $104.
“I went from amused to legitimately angry,” he said. “If you take people's standard of living and you tank it through filth and crime and inflation, and they literally can't buy the groceries they want at that point, maybe it matters less what you say, or whether you're a good person or a bad person. You're wrecking people's lives in their country. And that's what our leaders have done to us. And coming to a Russian grocery store, the heart of evil, and seeing what things cost and how people live. It will radicalize you against our leaders. That's how I feel, anyway. Radicalized. We're not making any of this up.”
The post was hit was a community note on X, which pointed out that "Over 60% of Russians spend half of their salary on food, according to Russia's state-owned news agency TASS," and "The average wage in Russia is 73,383 RUB per month (which is $791 with today's exchange rate)."
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) went so far as to call Carlson a "useful idiot" for the video, but others came to his defense, highlighting that the point of the video was not to showcase the purchasing power of an American tourist, but rather to show what a Russian grocery store looks like two years into sanctions.
Are you serious, Thom? He did this video to strictly prove not a damn thing has changed there despite the war..
— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) February 16, 2024
Yet when something goes awry here, gas goes up… groceries go up… EVERYTHING GOES UP! WE ARE SICK OF THIS.
You are my Senator. I voted for you and supported you. Do…