WND Continued To Spin Tucker Carlson’s Pro-Putin Propaganda

WorldNetDaily absolutely loved Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, so when he dropped another video a few days later touting the wonders of Moscow, WND uncritically posted that one too. WND was certainly not going to raise questions about the claims he made glorifying the city — presumably to further puff up Putin. Meanwhile, more honest media outlets pointed out the flaws in Carlson’s praise:

In a short video segment recorded in Moscow, Carlson shops at a local grocery store and marvels that groceries to feed a Russian family for a week cost perhaps a quarter as much as similar groceries would cost in the United States. This enraged him. But Russia’s per capita GDP is about $15,000, compared with America’s, which is about $76,000. Stuff costs more in rich countries than in poorer ones. Carlson should go shopping in Mexico, where his groceries would also be much cheaper. Perhaps he would gain newfound respect for the Mexican government.

Carlson also marvels at the grandeur of a subway station, contrasting Moscow’s subway favorably with New York’s. While it’s true that the Russian capital’s subways are excellent, the stations are so grand there because they were built by Joseph Stalin at huge public expense to showcase the superiority of Soviet Communism. In contrast, New York’s subways are a product of capitalism, having been built and operated through public-private partnerships of various kinds, which are more budget-conscious.

Laura Hollis, meanwhile, used her Feb. 15 column to endorse authoritarian leaders over the messiness that can happen in the U.S. because they make the trains run on time, or something:

Tucker Carlson’s critics will no doubt point out the authoritarian control of the governments that run the clean and safe cities he praised – just as they criticize El Salvador’s recently reelected President Nayib Bukele, who has cleaned up that small country with widespread arrests and incarceration of tens of thousands of gang members whose rampant crime made El Salvador unlivable.

The United States is hardly in a position to criticize El Salvador. Under the guise of “freedom,” the elites in our entertainment industry, media and academia routinely promote behavior that is both personally and societally destructive. At the same time, those in control of our government – which is increasingly authoritarian – use their power to go after Christians who are peacefully trying to persuade pregnant women to keep their babies. They attack parents trying to keep porn out of school libraries and classrooms, and biological males out of their daughters’ sports teams, locker rooms and bathrooms. They allow roving mobs to burn whole sections of cities, killing dozens and doing billions of dollars in damage, but prosecute those who attempt to defend those businesses and their owners, just as they prosecute individuals who defend themselves, or defend helpless passengers on city subways.

Our government censors those trying to tell the American public the truth. It imports crime and poverty by allowing migrants to pour into this country by the millions, ignoring the potential terrorists, the gang members who will go on to commit violent crimes, those who traffic women and children for sex slavery or import the fentanyl that’s killing 100,000 Americans a year. And in “no bail” states like New York and Illinois, migrants who do commit crimes are put back on the streets, able to re-offend.

At least the authoritarian governments in some countries use their power to enforce order. Ours uses its power to facilitate chaos.

WND did, however, also publish a rare dissent in the form of a Feb. 15 column by David Harsanyi:

If you’re wealthy, I imagine, Moscow is pretty great. This is true of most European cities. When you’re an American tourist, you tend to stay in clean and beautiful city centers, eat at the best spots and wander around the most attractive areas of town. In Europe, you get to see onion domes that were built by serfs dotting the skyline. I’m sure it’s neat.

It is also true that if you’re an average person, Moscow is awful. The average Muscovite is most likely to live in some grim outlying apartment complex, many of which were built during the Soviet era. That’s if they’re lucky. Many Russians live in Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk and Ufa. Russia’s per capita yearly GDP is around $13,000. In the United States, it is around $83,000. It’s around $46,000 in Mississippi, our poorest state. Most Russians are living in what most Americans would consider poverty.

[…]

Carlson often talks about the attacks on free speech and free inquiry. Well, neither exists for the people in Moscow in any real way. Russia is an authoritarian state. Simply because Democrats have turned on Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t make him any less terrible.

The decadeslong effort of the American Left to portray the U.S. as a backward hellhole is finally paying off. One hopes the Right will not follow suit – though some populists are already starting to sound indistinguishable from the average progressive leftist.

That narrative flamed out, but WND wasn’t done fluffing Carlson over his Moscow misadventures. Bob Unruh wrote in a Feb. 26 article:

A report has surfaced that is leaving fans of popular American journalist Tucker Carlson, who recently traveled to Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin, stunned: He was targeted by a plot to assassinate him with a bomb.

A new report published by The Gateway Pundit explains, “A young man has reportedly just been arrested in Moscow in connection with an attempted assassination of Tucker Carlson. According to reporter Simon Ateba, the man who has been arrested was reportedly being paid by Ukrainian intelligence to plant an explosive device in a vehicle used by Tucker while he was there to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

[…]

The report credited the “Russian Counter-Terrorism Unit” for halting the scheme.

The report said a Moscow man was arrested and accused of accepting a promise of payment, $4,000, from Ukrainian intelligence to blow up a car apparently being used by Carlson.

The fact that the discredited Gateway Pundit is Unruh’s source is a big red flag. Another one appears in the Community Notes attached to the tweet by ranty journalist Simon Ateba embedded in the article: The source for the claim is something called the Intel Drop, a purveyor of fake news and “a known pro-Kremlin disinformation website.” Unruh would not have told his readers this otherwise — it’s purely an accident that his pro-Tucker, pro-Putin propaganda was debunked.