Tucker Carlson Mocked For Saying Moscow Is ‘So Much Nicer’ Than Any City In The U.S.

Former Fox New host Tucker Carlson claimed that Moscow is a far nicer place when compared to any city in America.

“I am a patriotic American and I grieve when I see that the president is a non compos mentis, and that in my country, it is considered very rude to say that,” Carlson said during an interview at the World Government Summit 2024. “And you sort of wonder how did you get to a place where you have an incompetent president who’s driven, not simply the standard of living, but life expectancy downward and no one feels free to say that that’s not a political observation, it’s a statement of fact which is provable empirically.”

“And the most radicalizing thing for me in the eight days I spent in Moscow was not just the leader of the country [Vladimir Putin], who, of course, is impressive,” he claimed.

“It’s the largest land mass in the world and it’s wildly diverse linguistically, culturally, religiously,” the political commentator declared. “It’s hard to run a country like that for 24 years whether you like it or not, so an incapable person couldn’t do that.”

“He [Putin] is very capable and many of you know him and you know that what was radicalizing, very shocking, and very disturbing for me was the city of Moscow, where I’d never been, the biggest city in Europe, 13 million people, and it is so much nicer than any city in my country,” he stated.

“I had no idea my father spent a lot of time there in the ’80s when he worked for the U.S. government and barely had electricity,” Carlson recalled. “And now it is so much cleaner, and safer, and prettier aesthetically – its architecture, its food, its service – than any country [or] city in the United States that you have to – and this is non-ideological.”

“How did that happen,” the commentator asked. “How did that happen?”

“And at a certain point, I don’t think the average person cares as much about abstractions as about the concrete reality of his life,” Carlson added. “If you can’t use your subway, for example, as many people are afraid to in New York City because it’s too dangerous you have to sort of wonder, like, isn’t that the ultimate measure of leadership? And that’s true by the way, it’s radicalizing for an American to go to Moscow.”

Carlson also mentioned in this interview how three of his favorite cities, Paris, New York and London, became unlivable.

“Paris, one of my favorite cities, [and] New York, one of my my favorite cities, are filthy, and part of the reason they’re filthy is because people spray paint obscenities on buildings and no one cleans it up, so that encourages more people to do the same, and our policy makers, for some reason, don’t notice this,” he stated.

“London, another one of my favorite cities, you see English girls begging for drugs on the sidewalk, and I thought to myself if I’m Boris Johnson – who briefly and very badly ran that country – I would ask myself, like, ‘wait a second, my countrymen are begging for drugs on the street, maybe I should do something about that,'” he continued. “But no, he’ll show up and give some speech about Ukraine, how we need to send, you know more cluster bombs to the brave Ukrainians.”

During a trip to a Moscow grocery store, Carlson and his crew guessed that a cart filled with food would cost about the equivalent of $400 in the U.S., but it ended up being around a $100. Critics commented that Russians have incomes that are a fraction of Americans, so, of course, costs would be lower there.

Carlson was immediately slammed by critics for his unsophisticated take on Russia.

CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria said, “Carlson put forward a bizarre hodgepodge of assertions he thought the architecture, food and service in Moscow was better than in any American city. Really? Moscow? Outside of a small historic center, is filled with drab Soviet era concrete buildings. And while the food in Moscow can be quite good… Better than New York or San Francisco? You need to get out more. Tucker. Carlson speaks enviously of cities like Tokyo, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And they are indeed wonderful in their own distinctive ways. But what’s striking about all of them is that they are somewhat tame and subdued. The product of authoritarian governments or conformist culture, or both. American cities are different.”

Carlson uncritical interview with Putin drew even harsh critiques. He was slammed for letting Putin’s claim Poland started World War II go completely unchallenged.

Even Putin later said he was disappointed by Carlson’s softball interview.