Donald Trump thinks his supporters are dumb. Vladimir Putin knows they are.
“I told you, our favorite, if you can call it that, was the current president, Mr. Biden. He was removed from the race, but he recommended that all his supporters support Ms. Harris. That’s what we’ll do too. We’ll support her,” Putin said, speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum on Thursday, trolling Trump and his MAGA base.
Putin’s “endorsement” of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race came a day after the Justice Department announced the indictments of two employees of RT, formerly Russia Today, a state-controlled propaganda outlet, for funneling millions of dollars through a Tennessee-based media company to pay far-right influencers to produce Trump-friendly content on the behalf of the Russian government.
Among the influencers on the payroll: Lauren Chen, Matt Christiansen, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin and Lauren Southern.
As you can guess, the influencers are scrambling to run as far away from the story, and the possible legal ramifications for their own actions, as they can.
Johnson and Pool posted strikingly similar comments online casting themselves as “victims,” and Rubin reposted a screenshot of Pool’s statement on Twitter, and blamed everything on “Chen and her husband,” Liam Donovan, the owners of Tenet Media, the Tennessee-based media company, who are alleged to have told the influencers that they recruited to the company that the seed money had come from an “Eduard Grigoriann,” a fake person for whom they created a fake internet profile.
Chen was fired from her job with Blaze Media, the far-right news network founded by former Fox News host Glenn Beck, on Thursday.
Neither Chen nor Donovan have been charged in the scheme, which has led some legal experts to speculate that they are cooperating with the Justice Department.
It’s also being speculated that an otherwise cryptic email from Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles warning staffers that talking to the press may cost them their jobs has to do with this latest Russian misinformation investigation.
“We have done a great job at preventing leaks,” LaCivita wrote in the email, as it turns out, one hour before their warning was leaked. “And that has been because everyone knows what the policy is and what we expect from everyone. Information is power – and the press doesn’t give a damn if you lose your job because you spoke out of school.”
The wagons are clearly being circled, which makes Putin’s “endorsement,” and Trump’s reference to who “Putin would much rather see” in office, all the more telling.
“Comrade Kamala Harris and her Department of Justice are trying to interfere in and suppress the Election in favor of the Democrats by resurrecting the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, and trying to say that Russia is trying to help me, which is absolutely FALSE. In fact, President Putin would much rather see Comrade Kamala Harris in Office, as he strongly said just this morning,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social money drain on Thursday.
Trump thinks his supporters will buy that; Putin knows they will.
Video: Donald Trump thinks his supporters are dumb; Putin knows it
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Chris Graham
