Glenn Beck interviews Tucker Carlson on Putin, Russia, and American decline

Tucker Carlson revealed in a spirited conversation Tuesday with nationally syndicated radio host and co-founder of Blaze Media Glenn Beck that his tour of foreign nations has little to do with those destinations and everything to do with the United States — a nation he would like see restored to greatness or at the very least boosted back to the domestic and international prowess it apparently enjoyed circa 1993.

During his first interview in the U.S. since his return from Russia, the titular head of the Tucker Carlson Network broached various topics with Beck, nearly all linked back to the health and integrity of the United States.

Before the duo delved too deeply into matters directly affecting the U.S., Beck pressed Carlson on recent critiques over his Russian reportage, for which critics have pulled the Cold War term "useful idiot" out of retirement; forced parallels to the Soviet propaganda peddled by the New York Times' Pulitzer-winning Walter Duranty; made accusations of economic illiteracy; and, in the case of Bill Kristol, demanded Carlson's exile.

Carlson recently interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin, then joined Muscovites in traversing the Soviet-constructed Moscow Metro system, wherein he marveled at the Russian capital's apparently clean and orderly underground.

Carlson also visited a grocery store in hopes of ascertaining firsthand whether sanctions on the Slavic nation have had an impact on citizens' shopping experience.

"Coming to a Russian grocery store, the 'heart of evil,' and seeing what things cost and how they live — it will radicalize you against our leaders," Carlson said in the video. "That's how I feel, anyway: radicalized. We're not making any of this up, by the way. At all."

Beck told Carlson Tuesday that it would not be hard to replicate such cleanliness and order if one would allow for the kind of totalitarian overreach and bloodletting seen in nations like North Korea; that behind such glimmers of utopia lurk monstrous systems alien to America.

"There's a lot of people on the right and the left that are both saying, 'Screw the Constitution. We need a radicalized leader,'" said Beck. "When you look at Orban, I think Orban is great for his country. That's not our system. ... Moscow might be great. Love to visit. That's not our system," said Beck. "The only path forward for America is through the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution."

Carlson agreed, making expressly clear over the course of the interview that contrary to recent complaints leveled against him, he is neither a flack for Putin nor a fan of strongman authoritarianism. Rather, he suggested that the point of his foreign travels was to shake Americans out their resignation to the very domestic trends steering America off the path Beck mentioned and toward authoritarianism.

"The people that run our country are destroying it, and they're doing it on purpose," said Carlson. "With what they've done at the border: completely changing the population, letting millions and millions of people who have no connection to the United States, can't possibly help our economy, can't possibly unify our very fractured civic culture ... whose loyalty and knowledge of the United States is completely in question. In fact, their identities are in question."

Carlson indicated that this engineered demographic upheaval is taking place amidst an imported opioid epidemic, costly multilateral initiatives abroad that overstretch the U.S., manufactured race hatred, and lawlessness.

He suggested to Beck that the destruction under way and the disenchantment that follows are altogether a means to break down resistance to a potential statist overcorrection and authoritarian regime.

"We have the laws. They're not being enforced on purpose," said Carlson. "And of course the reason is because people will lose faith in liberal democracy, and they will welcome a strongman, and that's exactly what this about."

While quick to attribute this program to the left, Carlson also credited the "quisling right on Capitol Hill."

"The communists did it. It's the color revolution. And it's Cloward-Piven," said Beck. "It's happening right in front of our eyes."

According to Carlson, the result and aim of this alleged project is that "people are just going to give up. They're not going to vote, [thinking], 'They're going to steal the elections, just as they stole the last one,' which they did — sorry."

"And they're going to steal the next one, and people are just going to be like, 'You know what? I don't even care. I just totally give up. This is crazy. Just get the bums off my street. Some guy just exposed himself to my daughter, or my nephew just died of a fentanyl OD. Make it stop,'" continued Carlson.

"I don't want that. I want to live in the country we lived in in 1993 or 1985. Not ancient history. Post-Civil Rights Act. We can do that. Let's do it right now," added Carlson.

This story has been updated with a new headline. The previous headline read, "Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson consider whether American decline is by design and a prelude to authoritarian rule."

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