Putin Trolls Blinken; Tucker Trolls New York
Moscow Radicalized Tucker; Now Tucker Radicalizes You
In our last post ("Tucker Carlson: Radicalized By His Trip To Moscow"), we shared Tucker Carlson's comments on seeing Moscow for the first time:
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, 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. And now, it is so much cleaner, and safer, and prettier--aesthetically: its architecture, its food, its service--than any city in the United States that you have to ask...How did that happen?
Now Tucker has highlighted the contrasts between Moscow's subway system and New York's, in brief yet powerful video in his X post below.
TC Shorts: The Moscow Subway Station pic.twitter.com/xX8qRrda3X
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 14, 2024
Over footage of the New York subway system's graffiti, filth, vagrants, and rats, Tucker says of Moscow's metro:
There's no graffiti, there's no filth, there's no foul smells, there are no bums, or drug addicts, or rapists, or people waiting to push you onto the train tracks and kill you. No: it's perfectly clean and orderly.
A Patriotic Service
In highlighting how Russia--a country John McCain derided as "a gas station with nukes", as Tucker reminds us--has far better mass transportation than we do, Tucker is performing a patriotic service. One reason America's leaders have gotten away with giving us such poor governance for our tax dollars is because most Americans--including Tucker Carlson, before last week--have been unaware that other countries, including those with lower per capita incomes than ours, have managed to solve or avoid our seemingly insoluble problems. In short, if Russians (and even Salvadorans) don't have to live plagued with crime and filth, why do we?
Putin Trolls Blinken
The other big Moscow-related news this week was Russian President Vladimir Putin's interview with state media. The biggest headline, of course, from that interview was Putin saying he would rather see Biden than Trump win this year's election (of course, that's exactly what Putin would say if he actually preferred Trump). But there was another interesting nugget from that interview. Putin mentioned that he and Tucker Carlson continued speaking for a bit after the cameras were turned off, and one thing Putin mentioned to Tucker was how U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has spoken about his ancestor fleeing anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia multiple times. Putin made a couple of points about that: first, that Blinken bringing up these events from 120 years ago is a way of denigrating Russia, but also, Blinken is implicitly admitting that the Ukraine didn't exist as a nation then:
We have it all in our archives. Blinken's great-grandfather really left the Russian Empire. He was born in Poltava province [which is in present-day Ukraine; see map below], and lived later in and left Kiev for the United States. The question arises: Mr. Blinken believe this is ancestral Russian territory, Kiev and the surrounding area, first. Second, he says his father left [anti-] Jewish pogroms in Russia... he believes there was no Ukraine in 1904.
You can see Putin say this in the video in the X post below.
🇺🇸🇷🇺‼️🚨 Tucker and Vladimir had chat after the interview:
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) February 14, 2024
📝“One of the topics that we talked about after the interview was what US Secretary of State Blinken talked about. That his relatives fled Russia due to Jewish pogroms. pic.twitter.com/AJ9jYLcpkO
Putin, Blinken, And Neil Diamond
After a couple of years of seeing Ukraine flags in Americans' social media handles, Blinken implying that the Ukraine didn't exist as a nation in the early 20th Century may sound odd, but if you go back to before the current conflict started in 2014, this wasn't uncommon. For example, in 2012, singer Neil Diamond introduced his paean to immigration, "America", by talking about how his grandmother left "Kiev, Russia" to come to the United States.
Who would have thought in 2012 that starting ten years later we'd be spending tens of billions of dollars, getting hundreds of thousands of men wounded and killed, and wrecking our putative ally Germany's industrial base to protect the borders of a country many Americans thought of then as historically part of Russia.
Let's wrap this up with a brief trading update.
Two Bearish Bets On Tap For Today
After Wednesday's recovery rally, we're hoping to get good entry prices on two options trades betting against companies reporting earnings after the close today. If you'd like a heads up when we place those trades, feel free to subscribe to our trading Substack/occasional email list below.
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