Tag: russia
Cui Bono? How Trump Is Dismantling Our National Security Institutions

Cui Bono? How Trump Is Dismantling Our National Security Institutions

I keep reading this story that's going around about a former KGB officer from Kazakhstan who wrote on Facebook that Trump was recruited as a Russian asset during a visit to Moscow in1987. An entire substructure of facts and rumors and speculation has swirled around Trump and Russia ever since the day in Florida in 2016 that Trump uttered his infamous “Russia if you're listening” remark at a press conference urging Russia to look into, you guessed it, Hillary's emails.

Then there was the Mueller Report that, while failing to come up with a provable conspiracy between Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign, certainly established that Trump was the beneficiary of an all-out effort by Russia to aid in his election. Mueller was even able to indict Russian intelligence officers and civilians working for the Russian government who either interfered actively in the election for Trump or aided him by flooding social media with fake news and Russian propaganda.

But you don't have to go back to the Mueller Report or take the time out of your day to peruse the Steele dossier to ask yourself these questions: What the hell is Trump doing now, and who benefits? The Latin phrase for “who benefits,” cui bono, should probably be engraved on his headstone right beneath his name when the time comes, because of the executive orders that he issues practically every time he opens his mouth.

Most recently, on Friday, Trump issued an executive order cancelling all funding for the US Agency for Global Media, which the Washington Post describes as “the parent agency of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio and TV Marti, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and the Open Technology Fund, which works to circumvent internet censorship.” The White House press release explaining its defunding of the Voice of America alleged that VOA has been spreading lies and “radical propaganda.”

The Post reports that the “VOA and its affiliates reach 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week,” including countries with regimes that severely limit the access of their own populations to media that is not under the control of their governments, like China, Russia, Iran, Hungary, Belarus, Cuba, and Venezuela. The current VOA director, Michael J. Abramowitz, posted on Saturday on Facebook, “I learned this morning that virtually the entire staff of Voice of America — more than 1300 journalists, producers and support staff — has been placed on administrative leave today. So have I.”

According to Max Boot, a conservative columnist for the Post, Abramowitz was until last year the president of a thing called Freedom House, which Boot identifies as “one of the oldest and most respected human rights organizations in the world.” Freedom House is among a constellation of organizations that had their funding either eliminated or severely cut when Trump had his henchman, Elon Musk, go after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Among the other groups that were defenestrated at the same time was the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental organization that is funded privately and in part by an act of Congress. The NED runs the Network of Democracy Research Institutes, the Journal of Democracy, the World Movement for Democracy, the Center for International Media Assistance. If those groups sound like they might be CIA fronts, it's because in addition to their do-gooder work for democracy around the world, they are.

USAID has also been used by the CIA as a front for gathering intelligence internationally. Certainly, USAID has done a lot of good around the world, feeding people who are starving in nations in the midst of civil war, working to prevent AIDS and treat AIDS patients with drugs that poor nations cannot provide for their citizens, and digging wells in arid regions where there is no clean water.

That's the thing about doing good works: when you hand out food to people who are hungry and drugs to people who suffer from disease and provide them with water that doesn’t make them sick, they tend to be willing to tell you things they wouldn't otherwise reveal to strangers. So, the CIA has used some USAID workers as both informal and formal intelligence agents over the years.

The NED has been used in much the same way. They've sent people to democracy conferences and meetings of groups promoting democracy in foreign nations where democracy is in its infancy or endangered. They make friends with people working for NGO's and for domestic political organizations. That's the way you collect intelligence. You make friends. You get people to talk to you. You talk to people who have been places where Americans aren't welcome. You make friends with people who live in dangerous areas where Americans working for our government simply don't want to go. Doing all of this, you gather information, rumors, names of people who might be working for countries unfriendly to us, like Russia and China, who are doing the same thing we are doing -- using front organizations to gather information for their own purposes.

This kind of stuff has been going on for decades and virtually defines the way the Cold War was fought between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and '60s and '70s and '80s. The U.S. used fronts like the National Student Association to gather information from countries in Eastern Europe and from countries in Asia that did business with China when we had no diplomatic relations with that country. A decent case could be made that at least in part we won the Cold War with the Soviet Union with some of the front organizations funded by and run by the CIA back in the day.

We're still gathering information about Russia and China and what they're doing not only in their own countries but overseas and in countries over which they seek influence. The VOA not only provided information through its broadcasts to countries with despotic regimes, reporters from the VOA gathered information that they didn't put on the air but shared with American intelligence agencies that were interested in what they knew about what was going on in countries not friendly to the United States.

Here is a story about how the gears in the intelligence business turn overseas. In the late 70s, I became friendly with a man in the movie business who ran a company that provided something called film completion bonds to motion picture companies. Nearly every movie that's made is a separate corporation, even if it's funded by one of the major studios, but especially if its funding comes from a consortium of various sources like wealthy individuals, film institutes from foreign countries, and other sources. People are reluctant to invest in movies unless there is some kind of guarantee that the movie they've put money into will get made. A film completion bond is a form of insurance that that will happen. The typical bond insures that at least one print of the movie will be made and shown in at least one motion picture theater for paying customers.

My friend's name was Sidney Kaufman, and he had a very interesting background. He had been a White House liaison to the OSS during World War II, and after the war in Europe he continued to work in intelligence gathering through his connections with the film industry in European countries. During that time, he got to know the two men who produced the first nine James Bond movies, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. The office in New York he let me use actually belonged to Broccoli and Saltzman. Through Kaufman, I learned how those two guys who owned the James Bond franchise made so much money.

The Bond movies did extremely well in this country of course, but it was overseas where the big money was, because they were huge there. The problem was foreign distribution, which was known to be a total scam. The way it worked was, you sold the rights to show a film in a foreign country, for which you received an advance payment against a percentage of the box office sales. The problem was that they lied about how much money they took in from your film, and there was no way to prove their lies so you could collect your money.

Broccoli and Saltzman had intelligence contacts with the Mossad in Israel. They made a deal with the Mossad to use its agents to surveil movie theaters when the first James Bond movie opened overseas. The agents would position themselves outside box offices and use one of those little thumb clickers to count the number of people who walked into showings of the film. This was done in cities all over Europe, India, Japan -- anywhere the James Bond films were showing, which was everywhere. When it came time for Broccoli and Saltzman to collect their percentage of the box office totals, the foreign distributors of course lied to them about how many tickets they had sold.

But Broccoli and Saltzman had actual figures from individual movie theaters, courtesy of the Mossad, and they could use those figures to extrapolate by the number of theaters owned by the distributors and determine estimated totals of their box office take. They demanded their money, and the foreign distributors laughed at them, until Broccoli and Saltzman told them they owned the entire James Bond film franchise and they would be making many more movies, and those distributors wouldn't get even one of them unless they paid up now.

They paid, and Broccoli and Saltzman got rich, and the Mossad got its cut too.

Take the motion picture theater box office receipts, and substitute information, and insert for Mossad the people working for USAID and the NED and the World Movement for Democracy and the Center for International Media Assistance, and all the rest of the quasi-autonomous non-governmental and yet very much governmental organizations used by the CIA, and you get a pretty good picture of how intelligence gathering works, or has worked, at least until Donald Trump and Elon Musk came along and started disassembling these elaborate networks that have been used for information gathering and influencing foreign governments for decades.

Cui bono? Do you think for a moment that Vladimir Putin's Russia has retired any of its non-governmental intelligence gathering networks? They haven't even tried to hide the assistance they provided to Trump in his election campaign last year. In fact, one of Putin's pals was quoted saying that Trump owes them: "To achieve success in the elections, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. And as a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.” That little jewel of a quote came from Nikolai Patrushev, a member of Putin’s inner circle and former Secretary of the Russian Security Council.

So, who benefits from Trump's deconstruction of these U.S. intelligence networks, both official and non-official? We know he put a certifiable loon in charge of U.S. intelligence overall as head of the national office of intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who has been unapologetic about her admiration for both Russia and Vladimir Putin, and her belief that there's absolutely nothing wrong with Russia's invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine.

There is something of a question in my mind about how much Trump really understands about the damage he's done to American intelligence by doing away with USAID and the NED and now the VOA and the rest of our foreign broadcasting networks like Radio Liberty. But it doesn't really matter what he knows because the damage he's done is right there for everyone to see. They took the name of USAID off its headquarters building, for crying out loud. Certainly the thousands of USAID employees here in the United States and overseas who have been fired are not benefiting from Trump and Musk and their tossing away of decade after decade of good works that has done around the world.

What you might call the secret history of the secret history of the way the United States collects intelligence is not widely known in this country, but you can be sure of one thing: it is known to Vladimir Putin and his henchmen in Russia, and it is known to Xi Jinping in China, and it's known to the other countries who are, if not our enemies, at least very much not our friends.

Cui bono? Not you and me and our fellow citizens, but I'd be willing to bet that Donald Trump has figured out a way to fatten his own wallet from all the damage he has done to the foreign policy and national security interests of this country.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. He writes every day at luciantruscott.substack.com and you can follow him on Bluesky @lktiv.bsky.social and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter

Where Would Trump Be Without His Spineless Enablers?

Where Would Trump Be Without His Spineless Enablers?

It's amazing how men who prided themselves on strength and toughness will submit to a gangster.

In 2022, after Russian tanks rolled across an international border into Ukraine and missiles pierced the quiet of cities like Kharkiv and Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earned worldwide acclaim for his courage and heroism. No one was more pro-Ukrainian than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who exulted in an arrest warrant the Russians had issued against him:

"I will wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin's corrupt and immoral government as a Badge of Honor."

Last Friday, after mad king Donald and his scheming viceroy, JD Vance, performed a tag-team ambush on Zelensky in the Oval Office, Graham sounded a different note. "Somebody asked me if I was embarrassed about President Trump. I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of JD Vance for standing up for our country."

Disgusting. A politician whose identity was forged as a hawk and staunch defender of liberty and democracy now praises the most powerful man in the world for sandbagging the beleaguered leader of a bleeding ally, a victim of aggression? That's standing up for America?

Ditto Marco Rubio, that gelding who has likewise transformed himself from a champion of freedom into an obedient toady to the man whose project is to destroy the Western alliance.

We live in an upside-down world where the far greater man, Zelenskyy, is being hounded to apologize to the gangster who behaved abominably.

Consider that even before the Oval Office debacle, Trump and his team had been grossly disrespectful and abusive toward Zelensky and Ukraine. Trump called him a "dictator" (though he declined to say as much about Putin). Trump then repeated Putin's propaganda that Ukraine, not Russia, had started the war. Vance told a European audience that he feared "the threat from within" far more than Russia or China. And then Trump proposed a "deal" that amounted to extortion, demanding the right to mine rare earth elements (which Trump called "raw earths") on Ukrainian soil in return for ... nothing. It was a shakedown. As Trump unguardedly admitted when he lost his temper, he regards Ukraine as a target for extortion because they "don't have any cards."

It was the most shameful moment in American history in at least a century, and a special shame attaches to the explainer class of analysts who, without even the excuse of fearing voters, perform pirouettes on their principles.

Marc Thiessen used his perch as a Washington Post columnist to excoriate not Trump for this blatant betrayal of 80 years of American world leadership but Zelensky.

As recently as June 2023, Thiessen had seen his role differently — that of guide to help MAGA types remain on the side of Ukraine. He outlined an "America First Case for Supporting Ukraine." But now, when the leader has pivoted, so has Thiessen. "The blowup was Zelensky's fault," he wrote. Thiessen excoriated Zelensky for resisting a deal without security. "He summarily dismissed Trump's idea of an immediate ceasefire — something that is extremely important to Trump, who is committed to stopping the killing — because he said Putin had already broken ceasefires 25 times."

But that's a key stumbling block, isn't it? Trump is demanding a ceasefire without security guarantees for Ukraine, which is an open invitation to Putin to sign the deal and then regroup and attack again as he has done repeatedly. Thiessen was quick to accuse Zelensky of disrespect but didn't notice the key part of an exchange he himself highlighted. When Zelensky noted that Putin had broken previous agreements, Trump interrupted to say, "He never broke to me. He never broke to me." Putin's agreement was not with Trump. But Trump's narcissism, solipsism and moral obtuseness were painfully obvious in that exchange.

Thiessen further scolded Zelensky for contradicting Trump in front of "the entire world." Well, it was Trump's decision to invite the cameras, not Zelensky's. As he boasted afterward, it was "great television." Thiessen was referring to a moment when Trump was repeating Russian disinformation about how all of Ukraine's cities have been destroyed. Zelensky was the soul of restraint saying, "No, no, you have to come, Mr. President, you have to come and to look."

Trump is as deaf to such appeals as he was indifferent to the photos of starving Ukrainian POWs Zelensky had brought along. Throughout the latter part of the meeting, when it became heated, Trump's favoritism toward Putin showed through. He scowled when Zelensky called Putin a war criminal, and when a member of the press asked whether Trump saw himself as "in the middle" between the warring parties or "on Ukraine's side," Trump said he was not on Ukraine's side and went on to scold Zelensky for his harsh words about Putin.

"It's wonderful to speak badly about somebody else," he noted sarcastically, "but I want to get it solved." Later, he said about Zelensky, "You see the hatred he's got for Putin. It's very tough for me to make a deal."

Trump is a soulless sociopath. This is not news. But without the Vances, Rubios, and Thiessens of the world, he would not be quite the danger to the Atlantic alliance, peace and security that he is.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOP's Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


Donald Trump Zelensky

Trump's Coziness With Russia Will 'Immediately' Cost Ukrainian Lives

In the week since Donald Trump and JD Vance launched a two-on-one televised attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the American president, his administration, and his allies have escalated actions that undermine—and even endanger—Ukraine and its people on multiple fronts, leading critics to denounced President Trump’s “betrayal.”

Trump and his administration reportedly will be targeting Ukrainian refugees in the U.S., and have already crippled a key military tool vital to Ukraine’s defense, halted weapons shipments, and ordered a top Pentagon agency to suspend operations and planning against Russia’s cyber offensives. Trump’s close allies reportedly are looking to back Zelenskyy’s political opponents in Ukraine. Critics—and even Russian state propagandists—say these moves send an unmistakable signal to the world: the United States has “switched sides” in Vladimir Putin’s illegal war against Ukraine.

“The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently declared, as MSNBC reported Tuesday. “This largely aligns with our vision.”

President Trump “was asked for his reaction after the Kremlin said the White House was largely aligned with Moscow. He didn’t answer — but he didn’t have to,” observed MSNBC’s Steve Benen.

Reuters is reporting that the Trump administration will move to revoke the legal protected status of 240,000 Ukrainians who fled the Russian invasion to come to the United States. These refugees, under a Biden administration program, were required to pay fees, be fully vetted, and have proof of a sponsor and financial means.

“The move, expected as soon as April, would be a stunning reversal of the welcome Ukrainians received under President Joe Biden’s administration,” according to Reuters, which noted that at least some could be put on a fast track to deportation.

While Reuters reports its sources say the plan was in place before President Donald Trump’s and Vice President. JD Vance’s Oval Office blowup, it also comes amid moves that appear to put the Trump administration on the side of Russia and President Vladimir Putin.

Earlier this week, President Trump ordered a suspension of critical intelligence sharing with Ukraine, a move that is “expected to cripple Kyiv’s ability to target Russian forces,”The Wall Street Journalreported.

The Trump administration also “suspended weapons shipments to Ukraine earlier this week,” after the “contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky,” the Journal reported. Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, “said Trump, after that meeting, had also ‘asked for a pause’ of intelligence sharing.”

For years, the CIA and other U.S. Intelligence agencies “have forged deep ties with Ukrainian counterparts,” according to the Journal. Now, that has changed.

“We have taken a step back and are pausing and reviewing all aspects of this relationship,” Trump National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told reporters Wednesday.

Trump’s decision to halt intelligence sharing “will cost civilian lives almost immediately, dismayed Ukrainians said Thursday,” NBC News reported. The President’s decision also came as European leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “convened a summit in Brussels as they attempt to cope with an upended landscape in which the Trump administration appears to be treating them with hostility while seemingly warming to the Kremlin.”

In another escalation against Ukraine and an apparent move toward Russia, on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News that the war in Ukraine is “a proxy war between nuclear powers – the United States, helping Ukraine, and Russia – and it needs to come to an end.”

Reuters reported that the Kremlin “said on Thursday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s view that the Ukraine conflict is a proxy war between the United States and Russia is in line with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s own assessment.”

On Thursday, Politico Europe exclusively reported that “senior members of Donald Trump’s entourage have held secret discussions with some of Kyiv’s top political opponents to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, just as Washington aligns with Moscow in seeking to lever the Ukrainian president out of his job.”

“The discussions centered on whether Ukraine could hold quick presidential elections. These are being delayed in line with the country’s constitution because Ukraine remains under martial law. Critics of holding elections say they could be chaotic and play into Russia’s hands, with so many potential voters serving on the front lines or living abroad as refugees.”

Politico notes that while the Trump administration denies interfering in Ukraine’s domestic politics, “the behavior of Trump and his officials suggests quite the opposite. Trump has accused Zelenskyy of being a ‘dictator without elections,’ and hinted he would not be ‘around very long’ if he didn’t do a deal with Russia. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has falsely accused Kyiv of canceling the election.”

University of Copenhagen award-winning professor of political science, Marlene Wind, blasted the news.

“This is just appalling. Is Trump secretly planning a coup in Kyiv by replacing @ZelenskyyUa with a pro-Russian politician?” she asked.

Bartłomiej Gajos, a historian of Russia and the Soviet Union, asked: “Is it official US policy to seek regime change in Ukraine? That would be my question to the administration if I were a journalist.”

Meanwhile, critics are also condemning Secretary Rubio’s remarks—with some calling them Russian talking points. And President Trump’s decision to target the nearly quarter-million Ukrainian refugees in the U.S. is also being denounced.

Critics Sound the Alarm

“This is nasty, heartless, un-American and dangerous,” declared veteran and veterans’ activist Paul Rieckhoff. “It’s sending innocent civilians back into a war zone to die. These are women and children and seniors. The latest move to deepen Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine. And American values. He continues to drive the knife deeper into the back of Ukraine. And NATO. Putin is celebrating. And the Statue of Liberty is weeping. Congress must exhaust every option to block this. I’d expect Canada or another good nation to step up to accept these Ukrainians. As America continues to fail and fall. And become more isolated and less safe.”

“Hold on,” said the Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimo, “didn’t President Trump just say that half of Ukraine is flattened and that his main motivation is care for innocent Ukrainian lives?”

The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser remarked, “How to see this as anything other than a betrayal of people who fled for their lives? The US welcomed them… and now we’re throwing them out, and switching sides in Putin’s war.”

Last week, Glasser wrote: “the United States of America has switched sides in the war between Russia and Ukraine. The country is no longer on the side of Ukraine.”

Late Thursday morning Glasser posted video of a French lawmaker, calling it a “Powerful speech about Trump’s betrayal of the democratic world.”

“My question watching this — where is the American version?” she asked. “Why hasn’t US’s own opposition to Trump been able to speak out with such clarity and force? Tempus fugit.”

Jesuit priest James Martin, a New York Times best-selling author, and editor-at-large of America magazine, responding to the news Ukrainian refugees may lose protections and be deported, wrote simply: “‘I was a stranger and you did not welcome me’ (Mt 25).”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Putin

The American Right's Decade-Long Lurch Toward Putin's Russia

President Donald Trump’s actions over the past few weeks have drawn cheers from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government — and with good reason.

Trump falsely blamed Ukraine for the war that began with Russia’s 2022 invasion and described Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator,” then threw him out of the White House following a public confrontation. His administration over the same period began working with Russia on terms for a ceasefire with Ukraine, attempted to extort Ukraine for partial U.S. control of its rare mineral rights, voted with Russia against a United Nations resolution condemning its “aggression” in Ukraine, floated U.S. sanctions relief for Russia, and on Monday cut off military aid to Ukraine.

The remnants of the right-wing media still somewhat in step with the values of Ronald Reagan have spoken out against Trump’s Putinist turn. But its more popular and influential members are lining up behind the president and praising his actions.

The right-wing commentariat’s decade-long shift from near-universal antagonism to Russia to eager amplification of Kremlin propaganda has helped create the environment for Trump’s recent moves selling out Ukraine in favor of an effective alliance with Putin.

As late as 2012, the GOP and its propagandists were still uniformly anti-Russia. When former President Barack Obama told then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” to negotiate on the issue of missile defense after the November election, his words were seized upon by right-wing commentators across the spectrum, from far-right outlets like Breitbart.com and The Gateway Pundit to the staid conservatives of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board to the pseudopopulists of Fox News, where hosts repeated the attack for years.

But following Obama’s reelection, a faction of the right changed course. Initially they were a fringe group seeking to rehabilitate Putin — a dictator who assassinated political opponents and defiant journalists — as a contrast with the purportedly elite Democratic president and what they deemed his excessively pro-LGBTQ policies. But the faction grew over time, drawing support from pundits like Sean Hannity, who sought counternarratives to excuse Trump’s Russia ties and attack Joe Biden’s Ukraine ones, and Tucker Carlson, who seemed to simply favor Russia’s success in its invasion of its neighbor.

The shift toward Russia became so prominent that in recent years, GOP lawmakers have sounded the alarm about pro-Kremlin propaganda infesting their party’s communications apparatus. And now, we are seeing the devastating consequences.

2013-2014: The right launches love affair with “macho man” Putin, calls him “one of us”

The right’s Putinist turn began as a revolt against a potential future of equal rights and dignity for LGBTQ people and escalated as the movement came to champion the brutish Russian dictator as an anti-Obama.

Putin signed sweeping laws during the summer of 2013 which banned the dissemination of “gay propaganda” and prohibited same-sex couples in Russia and foreigners from nations with marriage equality from adopting Russian children. This triggered widespread condemnation and even calls to boycott the impending Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.

When Obama added his voice, saying in an August appearance that he had “no patience” for countries that impose laws “violating the basic morality that I think should transcend every country,” a faction of right-wing media responded by siding with Putin.

“Our moral and cultural elites have put Putin on notice: Get in step with us on homosexual rights — or we may just boycott your Sochi games,” wrote the paleoconservative Pat Buchanan. “What this reveals is the distance America has traveled, morally and culturally, in a few short years, and our amnesia about who we Americans once were, and what it is we once believed.”

Buchanan added that Putin was trying to restore the “moral compass” of the Orthodox Church. After quoting a Putin remark praising Christianity’s influence on Russia, he wrote: “Anyone ever heard anything like that from the Post, the Times or Barack Hussein Obama?”

(Putin’s opposition to marriage equality made him “one of us” in “the culture war for mankind’s future,” Buchanan suggested later that year.)

Right-wing commentators over the following years began praising Putin as the polar opposite of the caricature they had created of Obama as an effete, indecisive intellectual. In disputes between Putin and Obama — between Russia and the United States — they started hewing to the Kremlin line.

Amid U.S.-Russian altercations over the Syrian civil war, Matt Drudge deemed Putin “the leader of the free world,” while Tucker Carlson argued that he was “riding to President Obama's rescue.”

As Russia invaded Ukraine the following month, right-wing pundits like Fox’s Bill O’Reilly dissected photos of shirtless “macho man” Putin on a horse and a helmeted Obama on a bicycle. While Russian troops were occupying the Crimean Peninsula, Rudy Giuliani was telling Fox’s audience that Putin is “what you call a leader” because “he makes a decision and he executes it quickly,” while Obama has “got to think about it” before taking action.

At times, the right’s Kremlinist corps would make explicit its desire to have the Russian running the U.S. instead of Obama.

“Can we get like Netanyahu or like Putin in for 48 hours, you know, head of the United States?” former Fox host Kimberley Guilfoyle commented in August 2014. “I just want somebody to get in here and get it done right, so that Americans don't have to worry and wake up in the morning fearful of a group that's murderous and horrific like ISIS.”

2015-2016: Trump’s Russia ties trigger right-wing excuses

While the right-wing media’s pro-Putin faction was not yet dominant, it included one particularly influential figure: Donald Trump, the reality TV star and real estate mogul who had become the GOP front-runner for the 2016 presidential nomination.

Trump touted Putin on the campaign trail as a “powerful leader” who “represented his country” better than Obama did the U.S. That praise, along with Trump’s known past (and secret contemporaneous) business interests in Russia; his hiring of campaign advisers notorious for their ties to the country; his waffling on NATO’s security guarantees; his open call for the Kremlin to intercede on his behalf; and the clear (and ultimately successful) effort by Russia's government to help him win the 2016 election triggered widespread concern about his ties to the country as he ascended to the Republican nomination and then the presidency.

Trump’s pro-Russia stance was unacceptable for some in the right-wing media — but not the stars of Fox, who made excuses for his actions.

In July 2016, for example, Trump called on Russian intelligence services to follow up their successful hack of the Democratic National Committee by finding Hillary Clinton’s emails.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said during a press conference. “You will probably be rewarded mightily.”

National security experts were horrified. But on Fox, the comment was played off as either a joke, a misunderstanding, or a media lie.

“The media has got the whole thing wrong,” Hannity claimed. “They’re purposefully distorting this whole thing, which is what they do.”

“I think what he was saying was they already stole them. They have them. Can you please return them to us,” offered Carlson.

Both Greg Gutfeld and Bret Baier told viewers that Trump had been making a joke.

However, the Kremlin seemed to take Trump both seriously and literally.

“Russian officials began to target email addresses associated with Hillary Clinton’s personal and campaign offices ‘on or around’ the same day Donald Trump called on Russia to find emails that were missing from her personal server,” PBS reported of an indictment brought by special counsel Robert Mueller two years later.

As the extent of Russia’s pro-Trump campaign came into focus, the most devoted Trumpists waved it away.

Carlson posited that claims that Russia had been behind the leaked Democratic emails published by WikiLeaks were “a lie” and repeatedly argued that the U.S. intelligence community was pushing an “unsubstantiated claim” that cyberattacks on American political institutions were “a Russian propaganda effort.”

Hannity put forward a similar thesis about the allegation of a Russian hack-and-leak effort to benefit Trump. “I'm just assuming this is another liberal media fake news story that they're all falling for, and it's politically motivated,” he claimed.

It was not.

2017-2020: Trump defenses lead to a tightening embrace of Russian propaganda

The Trumpist right’s fervent need to defend him at all cost led to its inexorable adoption of pro-Russian narratives over the course of his presidency. During Trump’s four years in office, three main threads braided together into a rope yoking pro-Trump media figures to Putin.

First, Trump continued to habitually praise Putin and take inexplicably pro-Russian actions over the course of his presidency. In response, pro-Trump media figures defended him by explaining away or ignoring what other press outlets and even members of Trump’s own party considered abhorrent.

Trumpist commentators became practiced in responding to the president’s public statements about Russia, arguing that in contrast to his rhetoric, his “actions” against Russia had been “tough.” When Trump shocked the international community by standing next to Putin at a 2018 press conference in Helsinki and validating the Russian dictator’s false claim that he had not interfered in the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s media allies touted his “very strong” performance and criticized the “mass hysteria” to the contrary. And damning reports about Trump sharing classified information with the Russian ambassador at the White House and meeting with Putin without a note taker or translator were downplayed or avoided altogether.

Second, Mueller’s investigation created a steady stream of damaging stories for Trump as the special counsel successfully indicted and prosecuted some of the president’s closest aides, revealing both the breadth of the Kremlin’s effort to bolster Trump’s campaign and the eagerness of Trump’s allies to participate. In response, Trump’s media supporters, led by Fox’s Hannity, developed a sprawling counternarrative in which Mueller’s Russia probe was the result of a “soft coup” by a shadowy cabal of journalists, Democrats, and “deep state” operatives.

Night after night, Hannity and his anti-Mueller crew put forward a series of bogus premises: “The media has been corrupt and lying to you”; “so-called Trump Russia collusion” is a “tinfoil hat conspiracy theory,” while Democrats had committed the “real collusion” with Russia; Trump was the victim of “the biggest abuse of power corruption case in American history”; and a second special counsel was needed to “expose” all of the above and ensure that the perpetrators “go to jail.”

With Trump amplifying such claims and rewarding Republicans who promoted them, these talking points became the heart of the GOP’s Mueller rebuttal. The counternarrative even led to the appointment of a special counsel for an “investigation of the investigators,” albeit one who turned up remarkably little of note.

Third, Russia’s campaign to sway U.S. elections on Trump’s behalf continued as the president sought reelection in 2020. Right-wing media figures like Hannity and John Solomon responded by participating: They teamed up with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the minions of a pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch, and a sanctioned Ukrainian lawmaker described by the U.S. government as “an active Russian agent” to concoct and disseminate purported evidence that former-Vice President Joe Biden acted corruptly by pushing Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, who was supposedly investigating Biden’s son’s business interests.

This disinformation campaign was flagrantly false — U.S. policy called for firing the prosecutor, who was viewed as unwilling to prosecute corruption by U.S. diplomats, foreign governments, international bodies, and Ukrainian anti-corruption groups.

But the right-wing narrative caught Trump’s eye. He subsequently tried to condition vital military aid to Ukraine and a state visit by Zelensky on the Ukrainian president announcing an investigation into the Bidens. The revelation of Trump’s conduct ultimately triggered his first impeachment — during which his media allies settled on the conclusion that the president had done nothing impeachable.

As Trump’s Fox propagandists scrambled to defend his conduct, one host broke new ground by suggesting that the U.S. shouldn’t have been supporting Ukraine in the first place.

“Why do I care? Why do I care what's going on in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?” Carlson asked on his prime-time show. “Like, why do I care? And why shouldn't I root for Russia? Which I am.”

Carlson quickly claimed he had been joking — but the mask had slipped.

2021-2024: MAGA pundits swallow Kremlin line on Ukraine, Biden

On March 3, 2022, just days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, a Russian government agency issued new instructions to state-sponsored propaganda outlets: Promote Tucker Carlson.

“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” the memo, which was leaked to Mother Jones, stated.

The Kremlin’s assessment of Carlson’s broadcast was accurate. The Fox star, in the days before and following the Russian incursion, had passionately defended Putin, criticized Zelensky as Biden’s “puppet” and his country as a “growing dictatorship,” denied that a war was imminent and then blamed the U.S. for its start, and mocked the bipartisan supporters of U.S. aid to Ukraine. And over the following months, a Carlson-Kremlin feedback loop developed in which Carlson picked up disinformation campaigns originating with Russian state media, then Russian outlets promoted his reports.

Carlson was the loudest and most influential MAGA media figure to adopt pro-Russian talking points about the country’s brutal bombing and occupation of portions of Ukraine — but he and his guests were far from alone.

Commentary that toed the Putin line became increasingly commonplace on the right among Carlson’s Fox colleagues as well as from online fever swamps like The Gateway Pundit and far-right influencers like Jack Posobiec. Within months, the right-wing propaganda machine was in full-scale revolt over the U.S. sending aid to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion.

The MAGA movement’s information ecosystem became increasingly honeycombed with pro-Putin propaganda over the course of the war.

Hannity, his House Republican allies, and his Fox colleagues spent 2023 attempting to manufacture an impeachment case against Biden which largely rehashed the disinformation debunked four years earlier about the fired Ukrainian prosecutor. The story did feature one new wrinkle — a report from an FBI informant that a Ukrainian oligarch had paid Biden a $5 million bribe to get the prosecutor removed.

Hannity promoted that account in dozens of segments, arguing that the FBI informant’s “bombshell” was “smoking-gun evidence” of “the very definition of a high crime,” and “might end up being the biggest story of the year.” But the tale disintegrated in February 2024 when federal prosecutors arrested the informant — who reportedly had deep ties to Russian intelligence — and charged him with fabricating his allegations (he later pleaded guilty). The GOP’s impeachment push dissolved soon after.

Meanwhile, Carlson was not just excusing Putin’s invasion, but doing an interview with the Russian dictator that was heavily touted by Kremlin propagandists and producing glowing videos that extolled the Russian system.

The situation became so bleak that in April 2024, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) — the former GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — told a reporter that because of right-wing media, Russian propaganda had “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.”

McCaul was not exaggerating — later that year, federal prosecutors alleged several prominent right-wing influencers had unwittingly received millions of dollars that originated from a Russian government operation aimed at promoting Donald Trump.

They didn’t push Russian talking points for the money — the Kremlin gave them the money because, like so many of their MAGA colleagues, they were already pushing Russian talking points.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

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