I thought Trump and Putin always had interpreters. Is that because Trump speaks gibberish, not English?
That supermarket Tucker went into and raved about?* Turns out it’s not a Russian store, but a branch of a French supermarket operating in Moscow. It even has the same logo as in France, and the name is a transliteration of the original French into Cyrillic:
*I’m not impressed by what apparently impresses Carlson. We’ve got coin-locking cart racks here in our mall, the Walmart here has a shopping cart escalator, and all the supermarkets have fresh artisanal bread.
You think that assclown has ever had to do his own grocery shopping? He went to a series of boarding schools
I always thought it was because, although the dignitary in question may have a good command of the foreign language concerned, they still may not have the necessary vocabulary to understand what will be discussed and thus a professional translator who has the time and resources to prepare for the event can do so.
He also said something about how the coin-locking carts were basically free to use, but were designed to discourage people from taking the carts back to their homeless encampments. The problem in my neighborhood isn’t the homeless stealing carts, it’s people who roll the carts way down the block to the bus stop (or a couple of blocks away to their apartment) and then abandon them.
Dollah, dollah bills 
Obviously a big reason for him to have done the interview is that it keeps his name and face in public when he’s no longer got a popular Fox News show to do so. Of course many people, on the left and the right, are laughing at him but at least they’re talking about him.
People talk about Hitler, the Devil, and insurance commercials. Doesn’t mean they like the guy or are gonna buy the product.
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
-Oscar Wilde
…until you discover that being thrown into prison for a homosexuality is perhaps worse. Oscar found that out. Carlson endorses it
Ha. I read the Cyrillic, and it didn’t sound like a Russian word, so I assumed it was just a nonsense name. This is even better.
Yeah, the logo was very familiar.
We used to have 2 in the Houston area (the Hypermarché!) but they went out of business at some point with one of them replaced by a rather successful Vietnamese market and the other converted to some other type of store - clothes or tractors or something.
Something, something, Freedom Fries, something, something??
A couple of points:
McDonald’ses in Tokyo are nice, clean, and provide good service despite being an American company. In America, the places are a dump. The local people who are actually managing things and doing the work do have a large impact on the overall quality of the place.
I was in Moscow a year or two previous to the attack on Ukraine. I haven’t watched Tucker’s video but my understanding is that he complements the place on being well-run, clean, having good service at the stores you go to, etc. That certainly was true at the time and I have no reason to think that it has changed significantly in the intervening time.
But, likewise, Tokyo is also well-run, clean, has good service at the stores, etc. Most European places are better than the US for all of this. Mussolini’s Italy was, purportedly, also a haven of cleanliness and on-time trains. So 1) the US could have those things without turning into a dictatorship, and 2) it’s a fairly tepid measure of how good a dictator is doing.
I’d also note that, while central Moscow is quite nice, the country as a whole has poor roads and there’s a lot of guys (even then) who looked to be former military roaming the subways around singing songs about how they’ve been psychology demolished by their government, and a lot of men who seem to have burnt out on life and don’t want to do anything anymore. The cities are having their centers upgraded by the government when there’s going to be public attention - e.g. when hosting a big football game - but that seems to be more about appearances than a genuine concern for the people, based on the scheduling.
And, I’d note that the scale of some of the public works in Moscow (and probably many of the revitalizing works in other cities) would clearly have required some serious acts of Eminent Domain. If Biden could just order people to be thrown out of their house, tell Congress to tax the people as much as needed (and they’d obey!), build whatever awesome but unnecessary thing he imagined, and run a band of assassins who will roam around to murder anyone who isn’t paying their taxes then, sure, we could have the world’s bestest and fastest hyperloop system from New York to LA in a few years. But, last I heard tell, Mr. Carlson was on the side of the Republican party and he shouldn’t be a fan of Eminent Domain, massive government expenditures, nor taxes. He’s basically just saying that Big Government is juicy and delicious.
I hope you know that this is a huge and pretty unfair generalization. Have you ever worked in fast food or retail? It sucks, it doesn’t pay well, and many customers (oops guests ) expect you to kiss their asses. That’s not “good service” that’s belittling someone who is perceived as less.
Then I’ll throw in that the customers are likely better in other countries as well.
There are three McDonalds near me. Even the one at the truck stop is not a dump.
Putin didn’t like the cut of his gibberish.
You could well be correct. I always try very hard to be polite and helpful to customer service people.
Damn, you are quick. 