Jon Stewart lays into Tucker Carlson: “You’re such a dick”

Jon Stewart used his second episode back on The Daily Show to rip into Tucker Carlson’s trip to Russia to interview Vladimir Putin.

The former Fox News anchor now has a show on his own network as well as X/Twitter, and last week he did a sit-down interview with the Russian president, the first Putin has given to a Western journalist since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Responding to the interview, Stewart savaged Carlson for failing to challenge some of Putin’s assertions, and for disingenuously arguing that Russian citizens have an advantage over Americans because groceries are cheaper, something that Carlson claimed made him feel “radicalised”.

“You’re such a dick,” Stewart retorted.

“It will radicalise you, unless you understand basic economics,” he continued. “See, $104 for groceries sounds like a great bargain, unless you realise that Russians earn less than $200 dollars a week.”

“But that’s the kind of context that a – what did you call yourself earlier – a journalist would’ve provided. But here’s the reality: you fucking know all this, because you aren’t as dumb as your face would have us believe. Perhaps if your handlers had allowed, you would’ve seen there is a hidden fee to your cheap groceries and orderly streets. Ask Alexei Navalny or any of his supporters.”

On February 16, Navalny, the most high-profile domestic political critic of the Putin regime, died while serving a sentence in a Russian prison, causing international outrage.

“The goal that Carlson and his ilk are pressing is that there’s really no difference between our systems, in fact theirs might be a little bit better,” Stewart continued. “The question is, why is Tucker doing this?”

“Here’s why. It’s because the old civilisational battle was communism vs. capitalism. But now, they think the battle is woke vs. unwoke. And in that fight, Putin is an ally to the right, he is their friend. Unfortunately, he is also a brutal and ruthless dictator.”

Reactions to Navalny’s death have come from the entertainment world in the form of a Pussy Riot protest in Berlin, where the Russian group claimed Putin was “personally responsible” for his death, and a personal tribute on stage by Bono, who encouraged the crowd to chant Navalny’s name.

Stewart made his return to The Daily Show on Comedy Central last week, when he heavily criticised both Donald Trump and Joe Biden ahead of the upcoming presidential race. “We have two candidates who are chronologically outside the norm of anyone who has run for the presidency in the history of this country – breaking the record that they set!” he said.

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