Russia’s President Vladimir Putin provides an interview to Tucker Carlson on the Kremlin in Moscow.

Gavril Grigorov/AFP through Getty Images

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Gavril Grigorov/AFP through Getty Images

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin provides an interview to Tucker Carlson on the Kremlin in Moscow.

Gavril Grigorov/AFP through Getty Images

This is excerpted from Scott Simon’s publication, Scott’s Thoughts. Sign up here to get early entry each week.

I spend virtually no time watching, or getting labored up about, Tucker Carlson. The former Fox News character has drawn criticism for his recent interview with Vladimir Putin, which happened simply days earlier than opposition leader Alexei Navalny was found dead in a Russian penal colony.

Of course western journalists ought to attempt to interview Vladimir Putin. Or for that matter, Nicolas Maduro, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un.

But over two hours, Tucker Carlson didn’t ask Putin about how so a lot of his opponents wind up imprisoned and murdered, or the warrant the International Criminal Court has out for his arrest for battle crimes in Ukraine.

Yet I did see the three-minute celebration Tucker Carlson posted of the Kiyevskaya metro station in Moscow.

“One of the ways you understand a place is through its infrastructure,” he declared. “What we found shocked us … No graffiti, there’s no filth, there are no foul smells … or people waiting to push you on the train tracks and kill you. … How do you explain that?”

“How does Russia,” Carlson goes on, “have a subway station … that’s nicer than anything in our country?”

Carlson is cautious to say the video shouldn’t be an endorsement of Putin, or Josef Stalin, whose authorities constructed the station. But the clear implication of the video, scored with dreamy music and swelling strings, is that regardless that Vladimir Putin’s regime imprisons and kills political opponents, and invades neighboring international locations with out provocation, it is all worthwhile as a result of Moscow has an immaculate metro station. No grime! No graffiti!

And the Kiyevskaya station does seem good-looking, with gold-trimmed marble pylons, and huge mosaics that herald Russian-Ukrainian unity within the previous Soviet Union. A portrait of Vladimir Lenin presides over the platform.

Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin.

From left: Giorgio Viera/AFP through Getty Images; AlexanderKazakov/POOL/AFP through Getty Images

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From left: Giorgio Viera/AFP through Getty Images; AlexanderKazakov/POOL/AFP through Getty Images

Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin.

From left: Giorgio Viera/AFP through Getty Images; AlexanderKazakov/POOL/AFP through Getty Images

Many commentators in contrast Tucker Carlson’s enthusiasm for Moscow’s metro to the boast of Italians fascists of the 1930’s that Benito Mussolini “made the trains run on time” (a declare historians dispute).

But that homage to the Moscow metro jogged my memory of one other legend from Russian historical past. Field Marshall Grigory Potemkin was mentioned to have constructed facades of phony, idyllic-looking villages alongside the route that Empress Catherine II took to Crimea in 1787, to enhance her view. The time period “Potemkin village” now describes constructions that obscure actuality.

Subway stops have been a well-liked place of mine to seek out folks to interview in an incredible metropolis — Chicago, New York, Paris — since you encounter folks in transit from a cross-section of neighborhoods. Many are in a rush, and shake you off. But many make time to share sharp opinions in regards to the mayor, the president, and life usually.

I discover Tucker Carlson didn’t interview anybody within the Moscow metro station. They have been on the town to interview Vladimir Putin, however he did not ask any Muscovites to say what they considered their president, or the elections in March, the invasion of Ukraine, Alexei Navalny, or different imprisoned dissidents. They did not ask anybody, “What would you like to ask President Putin?”

Even Tucker Carlson should know that asking Russians their opinions could be harmful. Do you assume there could be no graffiti in a Moscow metro station as a result of anybody who considers spray-painting a slogan is aware of they may wind up in a gulag? Is the stainless fantastic thing about that metro station a Potemkin village glossing over the concern with which many Russians dwell?

Charles Maynes, NPR’s Moscow correspondent, confirms, “The metro is a jewel.” But he additionally informed us that he interviews folks on the road solely with out utilizing their final names, for his or her security. And — “if you don’t talk about the war.”

This first appeared in Scott Simon’s publication, Scott’s Thoughts. Sign up here to get early entry on his perspective on what’s within the information each week.