A wave of Russian disinformation swept Donald Trump into office: Fake articles on Facebook blared the Pope’s endorsement. The New York Post informed us Hillary was going to be indicted and die of a rare disease next week.
Since then, Trump has adapted that fake news operation to turn around the negative publicity from 91 felony counts.
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And Trump and Putin’s success – in dictating that the House end US aid to Ukraine against the Russian invasion, while unleashing a host of anti-Ukraine social media trolls – represents the second most successful intelligence operation by a foreign adversary in US history, after the one that got Trump elected.
Much has changed since Reagan said “Tear down this wall” and Americans unanimously supported brave Ukrainian defenders against hordes of Russian war criminals.
One thing that has not changed is the set of standard methods Russian intelligence employs, and which Trump has adopted to use on any audience gullible enough to believe that “Mexico will pay for the wall.”
Here are some of the Russian ploys specifically identified by Western intelligence agencies:
Pokazuhka – Perception management or thought control. Since the Soviet days, Russian security services use this both internally for control of the people and against foreign media to skew, influence and misdirect.
There could hardly be a better example than Tucker Carlson letting Putin drone on for 45 minutes about the ancient history of the Rus that proves that Russia was justified to invade Ukraine. By that logic, the Louisiana National Guard should make contingency plans for invasion by the French, the Spanish, and the Choctaw Indians.
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Then there was Tucker Carlson showing us the shiny Moscow metro as an example of advanced Russian civilization, without showing us the arctic gulag prisons where political opponents go for a walk and never come back alive.
Poleznyy Durak (useful idiot) – Manipulatable, gullible and naive foreign individuals — private, governmental or media, at whatever level by playing on their inattention, indifference, ignorance, obliviousness.
In the Tucker Carlson interview, Putin got to cut out the middleman. But Carlson was soon back on the airwaves to prove his aptitude for employing the Russian intelligence playbook, combining Poleznyy Durak with Pokazuhka by going to the grocery store in Moscow to show how much better consumers have it under Putin than in the wasteland of American carnage. Carlson showed off all the groceries he could buy for $100 that would cost $400 under Bidenomics.
Carlson forgot to mention that the average monthly wage in Russia is $787, for a grand total of less than $10,000 a year, hardly the envy of the American worker.
Kompromat – Compromising or contorting a point of view or political position by subliminal suggestion, dropping a hint via disinformation, planting a “hypothetical or bombshell idea.”
Sometimes it is not so subtle, as in the recent firehose of disinformation from the Russian Embassy – that Russia did not initiate the war in Ukraine and tried to achieve peace through the Minsk agreements concluded under coercion of Russian troops already inside Ukraine that Russia accuses the West of never intending to follow. The Russian Embassy does not mention that Russia never abided by the agreements that required a cease fire and withdrawal of foreign troops.
MAGA trolls willingly repeat this disinformation about how much better life is under Putin than Biden.
It is not hard to find a US useful idiot to repeat Russian kompromat, like Mollie Hemingway, who says the Russian cyberattack against US elections in 2016, was a “hoax” that was suggested to Hillary Clinton by the CIA.
This constant MAGA refrain flies in the face of conclusive proof that the Trump campaign did, in fact, collude with the Russian cyberattack. Repeating that propaganda requires ignoring the contrary findings of the Republican Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020.
Vranyo – These are lies that everyone knows is a lie, but the media will nonetheless repeat to give legs to the lie. Often Putin wants everyone to recognize a lying denial as a lie by which Putin is actually claiming responsibility. This applies to journalists who fall out of windows and Prigozhin’s plane exploding.
Carlson helped Putin top the charts with the claim that Poland started World War II, just like Ukraine started the Russian full-scale invasion in 2022. This is also a threat to Poland for helping Ukraine and moving away from the autocracy Putin seeks to reassert in the countries that formerly languished behind the Iron Curtain of Soviet domination.
Lately, there is no better conduit of Russian Vranyo than Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville. Tuberville has repeated a litany of fallacious, simplistic Kremlin talking points identified by a former US intelligence operative, effectively pushed by Russian intelligence to raise questions whether the US should support Ukraine.
These include Tuberville’s Putin-friendly pronouncements, direct from Russian influence operations, cleared for release by the Prepublication Classification Review Board:
- Russia is too big and powerful to be defeated.
- Putin is the peacemaker who wants to negotiate.
- Ukraine support is draining the US defense budget, and the money should be spent elsewhere (southern border).
The irony of all this assistance Russia is receiving from sympathetic and gullible Americans in its influence operations is that, make no mistake, Putin does not return the affection.
Putin hates America and his goal is to send it into chaos if not destroy it.
These need no intel confirmation, as the words are plain from Putin’s own mouth. Of course, in true Vranyo fashion, Putin also claims the opposite, that it is the West that seeks to divide Russia. The irony extends to Putin’s contempt for his Polezni Durak sycophants that spout Pohhazuka, Kompromat and Vranyo.
One thing US intelligence confirms for sure: It is time for decisive leadership, in place of this handwringing.
Putin, like most bullies, is always testing weaklings and quislings, but backs off whenever his deceptive devices are met with a strong and unwavering rejection. It is high time the Tubervilles stop playing into Putin’s hands.
If House Speaker Mike Johnson really believes he is ordained to be Moses leading America to the promised land, it is time to show that leadership against the evil regime that just killed Navalny, not to serve as a lackey for Americans who look up to Putin.
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