Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson this week posted a series of videos whose purpose is to tell Americans that they don't have it anywhere near as good as the people of Russia.
As evidence, Carlson went to a subway station and a grocery store in tourist-heavy areas Moscow to argue that Russians live in luxury that Americans can only dream of.
Many American conservatives were quick to point out that Carlson is providing a massively misleading portrayal of life in Russia by visiting cherry-picked ritzy areas.
"This is so amazingly stupid," wrote Jonah Goldberg in response to Carlson's grocery store video. "I don’t care what some flagship supermarket in an imperial city looks like. Russia is far, far, poorer than our poorest state, Mississippi. Oh, and it’s also a crappy dictatorship."
Joel Berry, a managing editor at the conservative satire website The Babylon Bee, offered similar skepticism to the grocery store video.
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"Tucker says groceries in Russia cost about 1/4th of what they cost in America," he wrote. "What he doesn’t mention is the average Russian salary is 1/5th the average U.S. salary."
Ilya Shapiro, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, also found himself flabbergasted that Carlson would portray Russia as an economic paradise.
"Nearly a quarter of Russian homes don’t have indoor plumbing," he wrote. "An estimated 35 million households rely on outhouses. But here are some pretty chandeliers and murals in a subway station."
And conservative attorney Marina Medvin said she's "never seen anything" like Carlson's attempt to inflate the state of Russia's economy.
"Russia has cheaper aircraft too," she joked. "He should check them out."
