French President Emmanuel Macron announced Monday new steps to boost Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invasion, saying not even the sending of Western ground troops was ruled out to achieve Europe's goal of defeating Moscowhttps://t.co/qJ81I5K4YU pic.twitter.com/0EY6IaXCCO
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) February 27, 2024
Category: Russian disinformation
Pure as the driven snow
Every so often, Republican influencers on social media roll out "new evidence" or "investigations" claiming to exonerate Trump regarding his ties to Putin and the Kremlin.
It's curious why this topic resurfaces if the matter is as resolved as they claim.
But here's the catch:… pic.twitter.com/gQ3J3MQvtL
— CosmicRewind🚀 (@TomorrowVenture) February 15, 2024
One of a handful
There weren’t many of us who insisted Hunter Biden was being set up by the Russians, but Josh Marshall was one of them. (And so was Marcy Wheeler.) Via Talking Points Memo:
For years I’ve continued saying, against what seems like the unified thinking of every reporter, editorialist and credentialed smart person, that the fabled “Hunter Biden Laptop” was obviously the product of a Russian influence operation. The story was absurd on its face. Somehow Hunter Biden decided in a drugged-up fugue that he needed to take his laptop to a computer repair shop. He then forgot about it. The legally blind owner of the repair shop decided to crack it open and look at the files (as one does, of course) and then somehow managed to get the contents to Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon.
Sounds totally legit, as they say!
The standard response has always been: but the emails are real! Hunter’s attorneys don’t deny it. But this is silly. The DNC emails were real too. That’s always how these things work. I don’t know whether some bogus documents were added into the trove that eventually made it to news organizations and the FBI. But very clearly some party either hacked into Biden’s computers or physically stole the laptop and then devised this cover story to launder it into the public realm.
And yet basically everybody and I mean everybody ended up falling for this. Indeed, the very brief efforts to remain wary of the laptop story in the final days of the 2020 election have evolved into an object case of the dangers of censorship and even liberal media election meddling. It’s a decision — albeit one lasting only a few days — that everyone now agrees “we got wrong.” It was the centerpiece of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” nonsense. But Elon Musk going in for it isn’t the point. He’s a clown. All the serious people ended up doing exactly the same. This has always been bullshit. Media organizations at first wouldn’t touch the story because they’d spent the previous four years kicking themselves for allowing themselves to become the promoters of a Russian election interference and disinformation campaign with the purloined DNC emails back in 2016. Since the Hunter Biden laptop stories had all the hallmarks of exactly the same thing somehow happening to pop up in the final days of the 2020, of course they were suspicious.
At worst, that initial resistance was very reasonable, given the record for 2016, even if it had been the case that the story was entirely legitimate. But it wasn’t. Even though the Smirnov revelations themselves don’t speak directly to the laptop story, they tell us very clearly that Russian intelligence operations have continued to drive stories at the center of the American political debate right up until today. Their work likely engineered the collapse of Hunter Biden’s plea deal which was one of the biggest bad news stories for the President last year.
Are we really supposed to believe that these Russian operations, which kicked off in 2015 and continued into 2017, were going full force through 2018 and 2019 with Rudy Giuliani and continue right up until today somehow played no role in the unbelievable story of Hunter Biden’s laptop? Of course they did.
In talking with David Kurtz before I started writing this David noted that we can’t really say Republicans and MAGA Republicans were duped. And that’s 100% right. The evolution of U.S. politics, egged along, skid-greased by helpful Russians, created a context in U.S. politics where these folks didn’t really have to be duped. The Russians under Putin are the good guys. If they’re making sure we have the most current information where’s the harm in that?
The real issue, as I note above, is the reporters, editorialists and commentators, who vouched for and credited this whole edifice of lies and bullshit. Yes, they guffawed when James Comer came forward yet again with more revelations that never quite panned out. But they didn’t give up hope. They were always waiting for the next revelation. Comer and his Republican colleagues hadn’t provided “hard evidence” yet but there sure was a lot of smoke.
This entire thing has been based on Russian plants and intelligence operations from the start. Every bit of it. It’s been obvious. And yet, well … they’re all dupes. Somehow almost a decade after this whole thing started we’re shocked to see, wow, Weiss’s office was being led around by another cat’s paw of the Russian intelligence services. We’re shocked. But why are we shocked? Every last person among the serious people of the nation’s capital and the sprawling thing called elite received opinion has egg on their face. And it’s not even clear they fully realize it yet.
All roads lead to Putin
How weird. GOP's star accuser against Hunter Biden turns out to be big pal's with a sanctioned Putin oligarch. https://t.co/51fQZPG0QC
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) February 13, 2024
Hillary’s usually right
“[Tucker Carlson] is a useful idiot… I wouldn’t be surprised if he emerges with a contract with a Russian outlet.”
This is why a conspiracy of traitors cooperated with the Russians to deny her the presidency.
Hillary Clinton is right. Again.
pic.twitter.com/6eU1kMYkWm— Jim Stewartson, Anti-disinfo activist 🇺🇸🇺🇦💙 (@jimstewartson) February 8, 2024
It’s crazy
the fact that the message of Russian propagandists matches the message of extremist Republicans in the U.S. is not a coincidence
they're on the same team https://t.co/bmghyxeO82
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) February 7, 2024
Oh, no biggie
When Forbes media group sells for $800m (more than the combined sale price of WaPo, Fortune & Time), there are questions. When a Kremlin-connected tycoon is recorded claiming to be secretly behind the purchase, there are more. w/@tcfrankel @lizzadwoskin https://t.co/nIgQviMZ3m
— Catherine Belton (@CatherineBelton) October 21, 2023
Russian tools
So RFK Jnr, Joe Rogan, Musk, Melville and all those other Covid freaks are — whether they know it or not — agents of biological warfare by proxy https://t.co/krC0ZnxeGe
— Peter Jukes (@peterjukes) June 20, 2023
Filling in the coverage gaps
In honor of the Durham Report I remind all that Russia intervened in the 2016 election on Trump's behalf. Trump was informed of this, welcomed it, asked for more it and took numerous affirmative steps to profit from it. https://t.co/AwrTNiyHUz via @TPM
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 17, 2023
Collaborators
BREAKING:
A new Dominion court filing shows that Fox's Rupert Murdoch admitted in his under oath deposition that Fox hosts endorsed the false notion of a stolen election. pic.twitter.com/epRVPVRKQJ
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 27, 2023
“They endorsed,” Mr. Murdoch said under oath in response to direct questions about the hosts Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Lou Dobbs & Maria Bartiromo, a legal filing by Dominion said. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight. https://t.co/GE1jW1BZef
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) February 27, 2023
According to the filing, Fox Corp board member Paul Ryan told Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch “that Fox News should not be spreading conspiracy theories.”
Ryan said he knew that "these conspiracy theories were baseless." https://t.co/kt9zDBQdXk
— Jeremy Barr (@jeremymbarr) February 27, 2023