That is amazing that food etc is so cheap in Russia. I'm not so sure this means Tucker is supporting Russia...lolol.
Presumably, we can agree that Tucker is a very smart, educated guy. So with that in mind....
1). As a really smart guy, Tucker knows that food tends to be cheaper anytime you go to a poorer country because the locals obviously have to be able to afford it, and the dollar tends to be strong against that local currency. That is true whether it is Russia, Mexico, Jordan, or wherever.
2). Of course, the exchange rate doesn't help you if you are a local. Also, if you're a local, your wages will be local wages, not American wages. Tucker knows this too.
3). Therefore, what really matters for locals is what percentage of your wages goes for food. That obviously is a function of both price AND the wages earned by the average (in this case) Russian. And Tucker knows that too. Yet, he provided none of that context to his "astonishment" at the lower Russian prices for food .
So why did he omit that context?4). You could argue that he was just making an incidental comment about prices, and wasn't trying to draw any broader conclusions so no context was required. Except he very clearly
was trying to make a broader point because he said:
And that’s when you start to realize that ideology doesn’t matter as much as you thought."
And:
“Coming to a Russian grocery store, the ‘heart of evil,’ and seeing what things cost and how they live, it will radicalize you against our leaders,” Carlson said in the video shot on-site as he shopped for eggs, bread, wine and other staples. “That’s how I feel, anyway, radicalized. We’re not making any of this up, by the way. At all.”
He is purposefully making a very broad political argument about the merits of the Russian system over ours based.on food prices, while deliberately omitting the wage/exchange rate context
that he is smart enough to know undermines the exact point he's making to the public.
I think that's absolutely despicable, and definitely "Pro-Russia /Pro-Putin". It might be excusable if he was an ignorant idiot, but he isn't. Quite the contrary. So you know that what he is saying/doing is both thought out, and very deliberate.