I know nothing about Lex Fridman. Wikipedia tells me he is a computer scientist, with a particular interest and expertise in artificial intelligence, and that he also hosts a podcasts where he interviews famous people. He is 40 years old, Russian born, American educated and a resident of Austin, Texas. That is all I know. And, frankly, I really don’t have any “opinion” about him. Good guy, bad guy? I don’t know. Leftist, rightist? I don’t know. Smart, not so smart? I have no idea.

Having said that, I recently came across a very recent interview he did with Tucker Carlson. The interview was done shortly after Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin and after Andrei Navalny’s death. It is apparently over three hours long. I have listened to the first hour plus, which my phone calls Track 1. Because I have never really watched anything that Tucker Carlson has done, but have come to dislike him intensely for all sorts of reasons having to do both with public policy and honesty (as reported), I thought it would be interesting to hear Carlson as an interviewee, rather than an interviewer. It was.

Now, Tucker has been, as we know, highly successful, as it were, earning $45 million a year when he was finally fired by Fox. Not that he needs the money – his mother (his adoptive mother – his birth mother ran away when he was a child to live, in his words, a “bohemian life”) is an (the?) heiress (still using sex-driven word here) to the Swanson TV Dinner (and real estate) fortune. He met his wife in middle school (naturally, she was the principal’s daughter), he is now 54, and he says “I have been with the same girl for 40 years”.

How did he come across? I guess in judging how he came across, I have to answer another question. Do I think he came across as he is, or do I think he came across as he wanted to come across? And I don’t really have an answer to that question.

But he really didn’t come across the way I thought he would. He came across as sort of a normal guy (not normal in a good sense), a little aw-shucksy, with an odd high pitch giggly laugh that I would think would turn most people away by itself. He has limited loves – his wife, his four children (now adult), his country (which he belittles like Trump does) and his God (about whom he didn’t say very much). And he takes his success as a given – just a normal guy asking questions of world leaders, who are also normal guys (and, I guess, girls).

He loves (emphasis on all five letters) America – but he finds a lot of things wrong with it. No, he seems to find everything wrong with it. Certainly its political leadership about whom he has nothing good to say. Not our government about which he has little to say good. Not about our cities, which he despises. Not at all the media. And so forth.

Why? We don’t put American first in our foreign policy. Why are supporting Ukraine? They will lose the war. Everyone but us knows that (“When I told Orban in Hungary that Ukraine might win the war, he looked at me as if I were deranged.”) but us. Russia has more people, a better industrial base (Ukraine has no industrial base), a better economy (Ukraine has no economy), and Russia makes more artillery ammunition than all the NATO countries combined. Whether all of this, or any of it, is true, I don’t know.

He feels sorry for Zelenskyy (who is not Jesus, by the way, and Putin is not Satan), who has been put in an unwinnable position by the American government. And he hates NATO, which does not serve American interests. If he were president, he would pull us out of NATO on Day 1. And why do we even need missiles on the border with Russia.

The United States was in its best shape in 1985, when its cities were up to date, and clean and safe. And look at us now. Moscow is beautiful – no graffiti, it’s clean, it’s safe, He drove all around it. Absolutely beautiful, no sign of drugs, no people sleeping on the street. Compare it to American cities, which are filthy, and where you are afraid to go to the grocery store. In 1985, this wasn’t the case. Then, here everything was wonderful.

He doesn’t believe Biden is the legitimate president – but he is considered the president, so you have to respect that. Putin didn’t badmouth Biden, and that surprised him. It also surprised him that Putin seemed nervous and over prepared. He doesn’t understand at all why Putin said that he didn’t ask him any difficult question and that the interview was disappointing.

He was not afraid to go to Russia to interview Putin. It was his first time in Russia and he was really surprised. It is thriving. Why are we putting sanctions on the country, since they obviously do no good?

Is Putin a good guy? No, but he runs a safe country for everyone, as long as they stay away from politics. And you can stay away from politics. Look at the beautiful subways in Moscow; then look at New York. The most important thing for a leader is to be measured by the success of the people he leads – are they living longer, are they safer?

The human cost of war is terrible. This is true of the Russia-Ukraine war, so Ukraine should end it, and would if the West wasn’t requiring Zelenskyy to keep it going. There should be an end. It doesn’t really matter who gets what as long as the killing stopped. Yet he didn’t blame Putin for the 300,000+ Russians who have lost their lives in the war.

But he is not Putin’s puppet (I am an American), and he didn’t like Bush’s Iraq War (I am a bipartisan American).

At any rate, he sounds like a normal guy, who keeps himself informed, and who takes the information he is given and reaches conclusions that no logical person could come up with. Although he is 54, his mind seems to work like an adolescent. At least that is how he sounded to me. Like a young kid with views on everything, and nothing to back up his views. That’s the way he sounded.

I should one more thing. Tucker Carlson hates a lot of things, because they are terrible, and a lot of people, because they are stupid. And if you listen to him, you will here about his hatred over and over. And what does he like? His concept of America. Oh, yeah, and the city of Moscow.

I have at least another 90 minutes to go on this interview podcast. You may hear more about it later.