#putin wing of the GOP

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Michael De Adder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 27, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 28, 2024

The House of Representatives will be back in session tomorrow after the February 19 Presidents Day holiday. It is facing a number of crucial issues, but the ongoing problem of the radicalism of the MAGA Republicans has ground—and, apparently, continues to grind—legislation to a halt.  

The farm bill, which establishes the main agricultural and food policies of the government—agricultural subsidies and food benefits, among other things—and which needs to be reauthorized every five years, expired in September 2023. While Congress extended the 2018 bill as a stopgap until September 2024, the new bill should be passed.

The farm bill has more breathing room than the appropriations bills to fund the government in fiscal year 2024 (which started on October 1, 2023). Four of the continuing resolutions Congress passed to keep the government running will expire on March 1; the other eight will expire on March 8. Operating on a continuing resolution that maintains 2023 levels of spending means the government cannot shift to the new priorities Congress agreed to in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, along with leaders from the Pentagon and the Senate, warns that the lack of appropriations measures is compromising national defense. 

On an even tighter timeline is the national security supplemental bill to aid Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza. Ukraine is running out of ammunition, and its war effort is faltering. Every day that passes without the matériel only the U.S. can provide hurts the Ukrainians’ cause.

All of these measures are stalled because extremist MAGA Republicans in the House are insisting their demands be included in them. Negotiators have been trying to hash out the farm bill for months, and today Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said she would rather continue to extend the 2018 law than bow to the House Republicans’ demands for cuts to food assistance programs and funding for climate change. 

Appropriations bills are generally passed “clean,” that is, without the inclusion of unrelated controversial elements. But House Republicans are insisting the appropriations bills include their own demands for much deeper cuts than House leadership agreed to, as well as riders about abortion; gun policy; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; LGBTQ+ rights; and so on. Those are nonstarters for Democrats.

As for the national security supplemental measure, lawmakers agree on a bipartisan basis that Ukraine’s successful defense against Russia’s invasion is crucial to U.S. national security. The Senate passed the bill on a strong bipartisan vote of 70 to 29, and if brought to the floor of the House, it would be expected to pass there, too. 

But House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refuses to bring it to the floor. When President Joe Biden first asked for the aid in October, Republicans insisted they could not see their way to protecting our national security overseas without addressing it on the southern border. A bipartisan group of senators spent four months hashing out a border provision for the bill—House Republicans declined to participate—only to have House Republicans scuttle the measure when former president Trump told them to. The Senate promptly passed a bill that didn’t have the border component. Rather than take it up, the House recessed.

Today, President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with congressional leaders and urged them to pass the appropriations bills and the national security supplemental. But Biden, Harris, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) all agree on the need to pass these measures immediately. The holdout is House speaker Johnson.

After the meeting, Schumer said the meeting on Ukraine was “one of the most intense” scenes he had ever seen in the Oval Office. "We said to the speaker, 'Get it done.' I told him this is one of the moments—I said I've been around here a long time. It's maybe four or five times that history is looking over your shoulder, and if you don't do the right thing, whatever the immediate politics are, you will regret it. I told him two years from now and every year after that, because really, it's in his hands." 

For his part, Johnson said that “the House is actively pursuing and investigating all the various options” on the supplemental bill, “but again, the first priority of the country is our border and making sure it’s secure.” 

Johnson appears to be working for Trump, who is strongly opposed to aid for Ukraine and likely intends to use immigration as a campaign issue. 

But Trump is a poor choice to give control over United States security. Yesterday, Special Counsel Jack Smith responded to Trump’s motion to dismiss the charges against him associated with his stealing and hiding classified documents on the grounds that he was being treated differently than President Biden, who had also had classified documents in his possession but was not criminally charged.

Smith noted that while there have been many government officials who have accidentally or willfully kept classified documents, and even some who briefly resisted attempts to recover them, Trump’s behavior was unique. “He intentionally took possession of a vast trove of some of the nation’s most sensitive documents…and stored them in unsecured locations at his heavily trafficked social club.” Then, when the government tried to recover the documents, Trump “delayed, obfuscated, and dissembled,” finally handing over only “a fraction” of those in his possession. No one, Smith wrote, “has engaged in a remotely similar suite of willful and deceitful criminal conduct and not been prosecuted.” 

Perhaps to distract from Smith’s filing, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability chair James Comer (R-KY) and House Committee on the Judiciary chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) today subpoenaed information from Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Biden’s handling of documents. Hur’s report exonerated the president and showed such contrast between Trump's behavior and Biden's full cooperation with officials that Smith used material from it in his filing. 

Comer and Jordan are likely also eager to find new material against Biden after the man who provided the key evidence in their impeachment attempt turned out to be working with Russian intelligence agents and was recently indicted for lying and creating a false record.

Since this year is a leap year, Congress has three days to pass the first four of the appropriations measures or to find another workaround before March 1, when parts of the government shut down. As Schumer said, those measures, along with the national security supplemental bill, are now in Speaker Johnson’s hands.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[jkanelis]

MAGA misdirects its pride

How in the name of all that is holy can the MAGA movement justify its political kinship with this nation’s most notorious adversary? I cannot even begin to comprehend this love affair with Vladimir Putin, his henchmen, his alleged principles and the idea that the MAGA cult in Congress is willing to all but give him a pass on his illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine. The MAGA cultists, of…

[nando161mando]

GOP = Groupies of putin AKA NAZIS

[notaplaceofhonour]

Understanding Alex Jones’s place in the Bush-era anti-war scene would do the left a lot of good in understanding (and not repeating) similar mistakes that the current anti-war scene is making today.

For those who aren’t old enough to remember, there was actually a time when Alex Jones had a decent amount of goodwill on the far left. He was obviously always a lunatic conspiracy theorist, and most everyday people saw him as such, but there was a significant enough portion of the anti-war left that liked him, that actually promoted InfoWars, appeared on AJ’s show, and linked arms with him at anti-war protests.

Without the momentum that his Bush-era popularity gave him, Jones would not have become a recognizable or relevant media figure like he did. The model InfoWars pioneered, which helped pave the way for the entire far right griftosphere that sprang up around it—from Breitbart to OAN & the Epoch Times to the sea of smaller Q-fluencers—owes its success in part to this diagonal reach across political lines. The extreme right wing conspiracy theory platform that has all but consumed the GOP would not have been able to gain nearly as much of a foothold if it were not for the years of work InfoWars & outlets like it did to normalize it in the Bush years.

Obviously I am not going so far as to say “The Left Is Solely Responsible For Alex Jones™️”. But much of the anti-war/anti-government left absolutely participated in helping him rise to prominence. They were willing to jump in bed with Jones without paying attention to his work or else were willing to turn a blind eye to who Jones was, all because he was saying things that were convenient to their cause. It didn’t matter that he was a rightwing or grade-A bigot; he opposed the US government & the war.

And I’m fully aware that there’s a common refrain among a lot of that “I used to listen to InfoWars” section of the left that would push back against this and say, “well, yeah, Jones is obviously a fascist now, but back then he wasn’t like that; he was kooky back then, sure, but the pre-Sandy Hook, pre-Gay Frogs Jones wasn’t nearly as bigoted or rightwing as the ‘Hillary For Prison’ Trump-era Jones became”.

To that I say, no, that’s bullshit. If you actually go back and listen to his show from back then… holy shit. He was homophobic as fuck. He was racist as fuck. The entire NWO/Globalist framework that he hangs all his other conspiracy theories on is built around antisemitic tropes from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion he regularly hosted & promoted explicit antisemites like his pastor Texe Marrs, who openly espoused that Jews (often named as such) controlled the world politically, financially, and religiously through Zionism, a global banking cartel, and Communism. In some ways, Jones was even more transparent then than he is now.

“Okay, but what does this have to do with the current anti-war movement?” I hear you say. “I never fell for Alex Jones; I’ve always hated that guy.”

To begin with, you should be on the lookout for the internal biases and lack of vetting that lead the left to tolerate Jones in the first place, whether you think you’re liable to or not (arguably, it is all that much more important when you think you aren’t, because you are never more susceptible than when you think you aren’t). But unfortunately much of the anti-war left of today has been making the same mistake, just with different people and organizations.

Take for instance Jackson Hinkle, a tradcath & self-described “MAGA Communist”, who has gotten a lot of traction with the leftwing anti-Zionist crowd (and I would be remiss not to mention, has also been a guest on InfoWars). Or take another AJ, the media outlet Al Jazeera, which says a lot of things that are attractive to the left out one side of its mouth while spewing a bunch of rightwing theocratic garbage out the other, much like Bush-era InfoWars did. Take PSL/ANSWER (Pro-Putin Pro-Assad Pro-Xi atrocity denialists & conspiracy theorists) are one of the most common fixtures of the current protest movement, regularly advertised as organizers by other prominent organizations like JVP & SJP. A lot of people on the left have been embracing figures and organizations that espouse Khazar Theory, Deicide, Media Control, and Blood Libels not at all dissimilar to the accusations you could hear from Jones and his pastor friend Texe Marrs, with the same figleaf of “anti-Zionism” that Marrs frequently used himself.

Whether by sheer ignorance or willfully turning a blind eye, the left keeps making the same mistake of tolerating & even embracing figures & organizations with similarly noxious politics & conspiracy thinking now that was made with Bush-era InfoWars. We need to do better. We need to learn from the past so we can stop repeating its mistakes.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at Think Big Picture:

For years, critics of Vladimir Putin have been warning that the Russians have taken over parts of the Republican Party. They raised the alarm as Republicans defended the Russian leader, parroted clear Kremlin talking points, and became mules for disinformation campaigns. In recent weeks, that criticism has shifted to include not just Republicans who have left the party, including former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, but current GOP members. Recently, two powerful Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee warned openly about how Russian propaganda has seeped into their party and even made its way into speeches on the House floor. Other members are now even openly questioning whether some of their fellow officials have been compromised and are being extorted. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) suggested in a recent interview that the Russian spies may possess compromising tapes of some of his colleagues. It’s unclear where he’s getting his information or how accurate it is.

And then there’s this: According to a report by Politico, a number of European politicians were recently paid by Moscow to interfere in the upcoming EU elections by Russians pretending to be a “media” outlet called “Voice of Europe.” The Kremlin-backed operation used money to influence officials to take pro-Russian stances. Authorities have conducted some money seizures and launched an investigation into which members of the European Parliament may have accepted cash bribes. This in turn raises an important question for our own politics: Are the Russians doing the same with U.S. politicians, directly or indirectly? This piece walks through the three types of compromise—disinformation, extortion, and bribery—to give a sense of what we know and what we don’t really know, and, importantly, where we should be on our guard. As this summary will show, from the 2016 election till now, there’s enough Russian smoke now to assume there is a fire, one that compromises not only the integrity of our own system of elections, but the safety and security of the free world. Duped.

Over the past year, we have witnessed two distinct kinds of Russian propaganda in action. Both use our own elected officials and intelligence processes to amplify and even weaponize disinformation. The first kind originates online through Russian-backed internet channels. Information operatives begin spreading false rumors, for example about Ukraine, that then get repeated within right-wing silos before reaching willing purveyors of it within the halls of Congress. A chief culprit in Congress is Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among the Russian-originated false narratives she has uplifted is the patently false claim that Ukraine is waging a war against Christianity while Russia is protecting it. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Greene even claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine is “executing priests.”

Where would Greene have gotten this wild, concocted notion? We don’t have to look far. Russian talking points have included this gaslighting narrative for some time. The twist, of course, is that, according to the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, it is the Russian army that has been torturing and executing priests and other religious figures, including 30 Ukrainian clergy killed and 26 held captive by Russian forces. The Russians have also targeted Baptists, whom they see as U.S. propagandists, according to an in-depth Time magazine piece on the violence and death directed toward evangelicals. The Congressional propaganda mouthpieces for Russia aren’t limited to the U.S. House. Over in the Senate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance was also recently accused of spreading Kremlin-backed disinformation about Ukraine, this time over spurious allegations that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy siphoned U.S. aid to purchase himself two luxury yachts.

[...]

The accusation that Russians are presently extorting and blackmailing U.S. politicians into supporting Russia’s agenda has some broad appeal. It would help explain some mysteries, including why people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suddenly is no longer as supportive of Ukraine as before and constantly kisses the ring of Donald Trump these days—after presciently saying in 2016 that the GOP would destroy itself if it nominated him. 

The problem has been that these accusations aren’t supported by much evidence. That means that political extortion by the Russians is either not a very prevalent practice, or it’s so effective that no one dares expose it. Either way, we’re left without much to go on. The Russian word kompromat came into common parlance around the time that Buzzfeed published a salacious story about another intelligence report back in early 2017. In that instance, the author, a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele, was concerned Russia had compromising data on the soon-to-be president, Donald Trump.

That report never wound up being substantiated, and its sources and funding came into question as well. But intelligence agencies are in general agreement that obtaining kompromat is standard practice by Russia, and someone like Trump could have been an easy mark considering the company that he kept (e.g. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell) and the projects he was involved with (e.g. the Miss Universe contest). Lately, the notion of kompromat emerged once again, this time not from Democratic-paid outfits but from within the GOP itself. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is one of the more “colorful” characters within the GOP, primarily known lately for being one of the eight members who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and even for getting into public jostling and shouting matches with McCarthy.

The Republican Party (or at least its pro-MAGA faction) is compromised by Russian kompromat.

[liberalsarecool]

The Right Wing is Russia. The GOP will parrot anything from Putin. Tucker Carlson is a pawn.

Russian spies are invited into Trump White House. Russian spies influence GOP committees.

All amplified by FOX.

[joyful-enchantress]

Well, I’m devastated.

Like, legit sick to my stomach. It’s looking like there will be no checks on right wing power in our government — Trump as prez, both chambers of congress with GOP majorities, and then the Supreme Court that’s stacked conservative. They will be able to do whatever the fuck they want.

How could we be so fucking stupid? I honestly do not comprehend it.

To elect a man that is a rapist (confirmed in court), a convicted felon, that was twice-impeached, that is besties with Putin and other strongman dictators, that breaks bread with white supremacists, that proudly brags about grabbing women by their genitals…

I just…

Cannot.

[odinsblog]

Zuckerberg says he's a Libertarian. What's that?

A new profile of mega-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg in last week's New York Times identifies America's richest millennial — he owns one-fiftieth of all millennial wealth in the U.S. — as a libertarian.

Privately, Mr. Zuckerberg now considers his personal politics to be more like libertarianism or classical liberalism, according to people who have spoken to him recently. That includes a hostility to regulations that restrict business, an embrace of free markets and globalism, and an openness to social justice reforms, but only if it stops short of what he considers far-left progressivism. Zuck, of course, isn't the only one.

It's high fashion across the GOP to claim your libertarian credentials. Ron and now Rand paul turned it into a money-making scam, and most all of the Putin caucus in the GOP love to talk up libertarianism, as do multiple right-wing billionaires. Senator Mike Lieber claims himself a libertarian and has for years.

We see it writ large in the rhetoric of Republican members of Congress and conservative pundits who argue that shutting the government down is a good thing because most government functions are unnecessary or woke. So let's take a look at how libertarianism would work out in America and where it came from in the first place.

Generally speaking, libertarians don't believe in democracy, which they say is mob rule and should be replaced by the magic of the market. Or at least the magic of people made rich by the market place, running the country's essential services.

Here's the one question that always stops libertarians dead in their tracks when they come on or call in to my radio TV program to proclaim the wonders of their political ideology: Please name one country, anywhere in the world, anytime in the last 7,000 years, where libertarianism has succeeded and produced general peace and prosperity.

There literally is none, nowhere, not a single one.

It has never happened, ever.

If it had, that country would be on the tip of every libertarian's tongue, the way democratic socialists talk about Norway or Denmark, where the full-on social democracy and regulated capitalism experiment has succeeded for generations.

—Thom Hartmann: But where did all this ‘greed is good’ as a political philosophy that Zuckerberg is now embracing start?

[mysteriouslytransparentwitch]

Hello Mysterious, I hope all is well and continues to improve with you.

You don’t need to post this ask,but I just wanted to express my thoughts on the expansion of the far right across the world, in relation to your last post about France and Macron.

1. Putin

2. Trump and GOP

3. Elon Musk

4. Nigel Farage

5. Marie Le Pen

6. Venezuela president Maduro Moros, plus Argentina’s president Milea.

7. Canadian conservatives now far right party.

8. Corporate right wing media in Europe, North America across the globe.

9. Money, laundered, bit coin or otherwise.

10. War in Ukraine.

All ten are connected, with the source being Putin. He’s been involved since 2015 when he stole Russia’s state money and the oligarchs money. He’s rumoured to be the richest man in the world at one point, and what better use of that resource than to fund a world in your vision of the future??? What we’re witnessing today are the dying throes of this evil heinous collaboration. Putin was very much behind the Conservative Brexit movement in Britain and behind Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Not to mention putting trump in the White House. Those were his successes. Putin desires the dissolution of the EU and NATO, a united Europe. Trump was espousing those wishes when he was ‘President’. Elon and Trump are his voice in the west. Maduro was pushing to start a war in South America for oil rich land in Guyana, and was blocked by Blair and Clinton recently. The Guyana president visited Britain when all diplomacy failed on his part. I’m originally from Guyana so I was paying attention to those moves.

Putin has been funding far right causes all across the world for at least a decade now. And he should be reaping the rewards of his hard work. But sadly, no.

The media companies don’t mind the marriage and getting in bed with Putin to consummate the unholy alliance. Money is money is money. Let it rain. They don’t even draw the line at promoting his blatant propaganda as they are doing right now in bashing Biden in the US. The US citizens have to wake up and make the right decision on November 5th.

Yes I believe you when you say Macron will have a fight on his hands in November. It will be directly as a result of the upcoming US elections and its results. All are connected. Sow doubt and fear in France, bring violence to the fore. See??? this could happen to you in the US, a civil war…. But what would you have Macron do?? Submit to the far right and plunge Europe into a proper World War 3? IMO Le Pen will always do as Putin asks, she is his wh*** he just has to say the word and she will obey. And proximity to Russia is also a factor in this. Again as in the US the media is heavily involved too. Right now they are flirting with WW3 in Ukraine. My guess is that war won’t end until after November 2024. A LOT of decisions will be made after November 5th. Just my opinion and observations. Thanks for listening.

I sincerely think that Macron and Lepen are ready to sell the French system for money. I'm serious this time. The complicity of journalists is beginning to be revealed. I can only see an explosion of the 5th republic.

I sincerely believe that the financial system wants the skin of the population. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, you know me.

There's too much of a weird connection. We talk again about links and traffic with Kadafi (Libya)

I need to sit down seriously and look at my cards

[meandmybigmouth]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Clay Jones :: Instead of impeaching President Biden, lying Republicans should give him an apology]

* * * *

The FBI informant who lied about Joe Biden was getting information from Russian agents.

This is important. Take a moment to let it sink in.

Recall that last week, special counsel David C. Weiss indicted an FBI informant who was the primary source of bribery allegations against Joe Biden. (Weiss is the special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, so the fact that he indicted an important informant against Hunter and Joe Biden is remarkable, to say the least).

It turns out that the informant was not merely making up lies. He was passing on lies that he obtained from Russian intelligence agents. As posted by Charlie Sykes, CNN’s Reliable Sources disclosed the following information:

The informant . . . admitted during an interview with law enforcement that "officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing" along dirt about Hunter Biden.

That's according to documents Special Counsel David Weiss filed in court Tuesday. As Todd Zwillich put it on X: “Just so everyone's clear: This would mean that Russia successfully used [Chuck] Grassley, [James] Comer, Fox News and others to damage the President of the United States and make fake info about him an article of faith on the right.” In the court filing, Weiss also underscored the weight of Alexander Smirnov's alleged lies: “The false information he provided was not trivial. It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States,” Weiss wrote. “The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day.”

In short, the FBI informant engaged in election interference with the help of Russia to prevent Joe Biden from being elected! And that information formed the core of the sham impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden in the House!

This is a big deal. It deserves a LOT of attention from the major media outlets that devoted hundreds of major articles and broadcasts to repeating false information about Joe Biden that Russian intelligence agents planted!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Kremlin could not have asked for better publicity at a better time when Ben Swann, a self-described independent journalist who promotes conspiracy theories, released a 12-part video series he promised would reveal dark truths about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Swann’s flashy documentary-style videos were filled with innuendo, attacks on Zelenskyy’s character and commentary from guests sympathetic to Russia in its two-year war with Ukraine.

The series, titled “Zelenskyy Unmasked,” launched in April as Congress was debating increasing military assistance to Ukraine, and it quickly caught the attention of conservative social media influencers who hyped the project to their millions of followers.

Among those who promoted the series was Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son.

“Curious about the billions of dollars and weapons Congress sent Ukraine?” Trump Jr. posted on X, Truth Social and Threads. “You need to watch the first episode of the explosive 12-part series.”

Unlike other conservative media personalities who last month expressed shock upon learning they may have been secretly financed by the Kremlin, Swann has no such qualms. He’s worked for Russia’s state-owned media empire for years, with one of his companies earning millions of dollars for producing Kremlin-friendly shows.

The creation of “Zelenskyy Unmasked” and its viral spread reveal how widely Russia-backed talking points are traveling on social media — a trend that concerns current and former U.S. intelligence officials and disinformation experts.

An investigation by The Associated Press also provides insights into the shadowy and profitable world of political influencers who are not required to disclose who is paying them, raising transparency concerns about their political endorsements in the largely unregulated realm of social media.

Swann brought on a digital marketing firm to publicize “Zelenskyy Unmasked,” and at least one creator acknowledged he was paid to promote the series.

Dire warnings

The revelations about Swann’s work for Russia come as U.S. authorities have issued increasingly dire warnings about the threat posed by Russian disinformation campaigns. In addition to undermining Ukraine, the Kremlin is seeking to disrupt the presidential election and sow discord in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West, those officials have said.

U.S. officials are particularly concerned about Russia’s covert efforts to take advantage of unwitting Americans to spread Moscow’s message and use artificial intelligence to quickly tailor false content.

Russia’s influence operation also appears aimed at boosting support for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has criticized Ukraine and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, the officials said.

Trump has dismissed evidence of Russian influence operations, and he and many of his supporters have mocked the broader U.S. government’s effort to highlight Kremlin propaganda efforts.

Registered with the DOJ

Swann filed paperwork with the Justice Department two years ago to register one of his companies as working for Russian state media. In an interview with the AP, Swann said he has kept his work for Russian interests separate from what he produces for U.S. audiences. He has done this, Swann said, by operating two companies — one that generates content for Russian media and another that produces independent journalism, like “Zelenskyy Unmasked,” for U.S. audiences.

“The only connection is that I own both companies,” Swann said.

The AP, however, found that there was some overlap in how the two entities operated.

A handful of guests on “Zelenskyy Unmasked” also appeared on RT shows produced by Swann, according to a review of RT’s video archives and records filed with the Justice Department.

Swann’s shows for U.S. audiences and RT also have similar themes. The Zelenskyy series, for example, echoed Russian state media’s messaging that the Ukrainian president is a would-be autocrat who has duped the West into supporting a conflict that Russia will inevitably win.

A former TV anchor

Swann, 46, was a longtime TV journalist before he was fired from an Atlanta station in 2018 after promoting the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy that alleged Democrats were abducting children to serve as sex slaves.

He has since become a social media star who portrays himself as someone daring to ask uncomfortable questions on tough topics — revolving around unfounded claims such as whether the Sandy Hook school shooter acted alone, the coronavirus vaccine was a money-making ploy by big pharmaceutical companies, and Israel was a ”participant” in the massacre of Oct. 7, 2023.

Swann joined Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine organization, Children’s Health Defense, in a lawsuit pending against several news organizations, including the AP, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines.

Swann said he worked as a correspondent for RT America, a cable channel that was part of a Russian state media outlet, until it went off the air following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. RT officials then asked if he wanted to produce shows for the network to air outside the U.S., Swann said.

“I said, ‘Well, I can’t produce shows for the United States, but if these shows are for overseas, I’ll help you produce them.’ So I started doing that for them, and we’ve been doing that ever since,” Swann said in a July interview.

Producing RT shows

Swann said he produced 10 shows a week using RT America’s old studios in Washington, and he stressed that those shows don’t air in the U.S. or Western Europe, although they are visible across the globe on RT’s website.

Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, individuals must register with the Justice Department when they seek to influence U.S. policy and public opinion on behalf of foreign governments. Not doing so can result in criminal charges.

Swann’s company, Rebel Media Productions, first registered with the Justice Department in August 2022, saying it worked for RT’s parent company and related entities. The disclosures show Rebel Media Productions was paid more than $6 million in less than two years by RT-related entities.

RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is a major player in Russia’s sprawling propaganda apparatus, and a target of U.S. efforts to block Moscow’s covert influence.

The Justice Department has said RT has links to Russian intelligence agencies, while the U.S. State Department recently unveiled new sanctions on Russian state media. The sanctions target RT’s parent organization, TV Novosti, which Swann contracted with for his Russia-related work.

In February, Swann stopped reporting Rebel Media’s work for Russia to the Justice Department, even as his company kept producing RT shows.

Swann said he ended that registration with the Justice Department because his attorneys told him it wasn’t necessary, despite his company’s continued work for RT. “They said, ‘Why are you making things more difficult for yourself?’” Swann said.

In response to the recent sanctions, Swann said his company last month severed all ties to RT.

“While we disagree with the censorship of our journalists, who were doing quality work on behalf of our client, we have and will continue to respect the rule of law,” Swann said in a statement.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

‘Assume they don’t like Zelenskyy’

Swann said he creates content — like the “Zelenskyy Unmasked” series — for American viewers through another company, Truth in Media.

Truth in Media, Swann said, isn’t profitable and is funded by wealthy U.S. individuals whom he refused to name. “Most of them own very large companies,” he said, “if not publicly traded companies.”

Swann said the large payouts he received from Russian state media had not influenced his work on “Zelenskyy Unmasked,” but he acknowledged Russia’s leaders probably liked the series’ tough take on Ukraine’s president.

“I don’t know, I assume they don’t like Zelenskyy,” Swann said.

Many of the guests interviewed in “Zelenskyy Unmasked” have been RT contributors and guests on its programs.

That includes RT contributor Tara Reade, who briefly moved to Moscow after accusing President Joe Biden of assaulting her in the 1990s; former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko, who was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury on allegations he had close ties to a “Russia-linked foreign influence network”; and Russell Bentley, an American citizen known to have fought with Kremlin-backed separatists and worked for Russian state media, who died earlier this year in Ukraine.

Another guest who has appeared on RT shows and in the Zelenskyy videos is Scott Ritter, a former U.N. weapons inspector sympathetic to Russia whose upstate New York home was raided in August by the FBI. Ritter told the AP that FBI agents in their questioning made clear that they were investigating his Russia-related work but did not ask specifically about his work with Swann.

Ritter provided the AP with a copy of an email he said was from a booking producer for Swann’s RT shows asking him to appear in the Zelenskyy series.

Ritter said an email invitation he received to participate in “Zelenskyy Unmasked” indicated that its executive producer was Sean Stone, who hosted an RT show and is the son of the filmmaker Oliver Stone.

Sean Stone did not respond to requests for comment, and Swann did not respond to a question about Stone’s involvement on the series.

Swann said his RT-linked company had passed along guest contact details to his business producing “Zelenskyy Unmasked.”

The two entities did not share staff, he said.

An ‘explosive’ series

Truth in Media began teasing the “Zelenskyy Unmasked” videos earlier this year on its website, writing the “explosive” 12-part series would answer “who is really benefitting from the $100 billion the U.S. has sent Ukraine.”

At that time, hard-right congressional Republicans were fighting a proposal to send more money and weapons to Ukraine.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Turner and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, both Republicans, said some GOP lawmakers had been heavily influenced by Russian talking points.

Turner said on CNN that some of those talking points were being “uttered on the House floor.”

To promote “Zelenskyy Unmasked,” Swann said he paid for advertising on social media but believes the series received its most substantial boost in viewership thanks to promotion from conservative influencers. Swann’s videos that were embedded in X posts garnered tens of millions of views.

“When you have different influencers that you can send it directly to, who can watch it for themselves, decide if they like it, and then share it, that’s a pretty powerful tool,” Swann said. “That’s more powerful than the actual marketing of it on Meta or X.”

With the assistance of the tech firm Bright Data, the AP identified a core group of influencers who played a significant role in helping promote the series. Posts by those influencers were shared by at least 9,300 other unique X accounts that have 33 million total followers, according to an AP analysis of “Zelenskyy Unmasked” X data created by Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship.

Influencers promote videos

The spread of “Zelenskyy Unmasked” highlighted how such influencers are playing increasingly pivotal roles in politics, and many have become de facto campaign surrogates for Democratic and Republican candidates. Trump told a core group of conservative content creators — who met in a “war room” during the last presidential debate — that they “are more important than I am.”

Some of those same influencers promoted the series, using identical or similar language to what Swann or Truth in Media promoted online.

Chaya Raichik, the founder of the far-right Libs of TikTok social media accounts, echoed Truth in Media’s promotion of the series, tweeting: “Where did $100 billion of our tax dollars that Congress sent to Ukraine go? Watch ‘Zelensky Unmasked’ to find out!” Raichik did not respond to requests for comment.

When Truth In Media promoted the third episode in the series, it tweeted, “The list of rich and powerful people profiting off the war in Ukraine includes President Biden and his son, but they’re far from the only ones.”

A few days later, C.J. Pearson, co-chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council, wrote the exact same thing in a tweet about “Zelenskyy Unmasked.”

Others who touted the series were former Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis; Morgonn McMichael, a young creator linked to the right-leaning group Talking Points USA; and Andrew Giuliani, a former New York gubernatorial hopeful and the son of Trump confidant Rudy Giuliani. Ellis, McMichael and Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment from the AP.

Conservative influencer Xaviaer DuRousseau, another member of the RNC’s Youth Advisory Council, said he was paid to promote ”Zelenskyy Unmasked” on X through Urban Legend, an influencer marketing firm led by a former Trump administration staffer.

DuRousseau did not disclose how much he was paid, said he was unaware of Swann’s work for Russian state media until interviewed by the AP and said he would carefully consider any future collaborations.

“Is there maybe an ulterior motive to you being against Ukraine? Potentially,” he said. “But I would stress myself out so much if I researched every single person in this industry that thoroughly, to be honest.”

Swann said Truth in Media hired Urban Legend to help with marketing, but didn’t know the details of its work.

“We didn’t know whether or not they were talking to influencers,” Swann said in a statement.

Urban Legend declined to discuss its financial relationships with specific influencers. The company said in a statement that it had been unaware of Swann’s ties to RT and would no longer work with Truth in Media.

Among Swann’s most influential promoters was the former president’s son, Trump Jr., who did not respond to requests for comment from the AP.

In a tweet on April 5, Trump Jr. hailed the series as “explosive” for exposing “the truth behind the war in Ukraine!”

The social media platform’s users added a community note to his tweet that noted Swann’s ties to Russia and said his claims “are likely to be disinformation.”

The warning did not seem to deter Trump Jr. A few days later, he again took to X to praise Swann’s work — in identical language.

[its-suanneschafer-author]

Continuing my review and summarizing of Project 2025, the GOP 2024 platform, and Trump’s Agenda 47.

1) Trump denies knowledge of Project 2025, a radical conservative Christian manifesto, yet many of his present and former advisors wrote the 900 page document which is a blueprint for the new GOP president starting from day one with massive, sweeping actions that will not only paralyze the government but will ensure chaos for years to come. It is the most detailed look at a future Trump presidency. Trump’s name is mentioned 268 times in the document, so it was certainly written with him in mind. Trump instituted 64% of the policy recommendations that were put out in the 2016 conservative mandate, a blueprint for the Trump administration and which was as right-wing and conservative as the current Project 2025.

2) Agenda 47 collects formal policies Trump plans to put into effect, many of which rely on executive orders and significant expansion of his executive powers. In 2023, Trump campaign officials stated that Project 2025 aligns well with Agenda 47.

These policies include:

A) restriction of Chinese ownership of US infrastructure

B) End the “Biden war” on US energy by eliminating every regulation that hampers domestic production, getting out of the Paris Agreement, and giving fast approval to every oil infrastructure project that comes before his administration 

C) Baseline tariffs on most foreign goods, revoking Chinese Most Favored Nation trade status

D) Decrease trade deficits

E) Not bailing out failing banks, slashing regulations, and repealing Biden’s tax hikes to reduce inflation

F) The Trump Reciprocal Trade Act will tariff other countries’ imports at the same rate they tariff our exports. NB: The costs of these tariffs will be passed on to consumers and will cause more harm than good

G) Gut Biden’s Green New Deal policies and electric cars initiative, and terminate all emission regulations on cars, fossil fuels, etc

H) Dept of Education

1—Cut federal funding for any school or program teaching critical race theory or gender ideology by removing the radicals who have infiltrated the Dept of Education. 

2—Keep men out of women’s sports. 

3—Create a new way to certify teachers based on their patriotism and give preferential treatment to schools that abolish teacher tenure, abolish DEI, and adopt direct election of school principals by parents. 

4—Pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that engage in “equity” by taxing up to the entire amount of their endowment

5—Restore parental rights to control their child’s education; allow parents to hire and fire principals and teachers.

6—Bring back school prayer NB: This includes reading the Bible but doesn’t include any teachings of other religions

7—Allow teachers to carry concealed weapons at school 

8—Immediate expulsion and sentencing to reform school of any student who harms another student or a teacher or use or possession of drugs at school

9—The US government will issue bachelor’s degrees to those who did not finish their degrees by creating a new educational institution aimed at competing with schools already in existence. NB: This is from the man who owes fines from the failure of his own for-profit college.

I) Reinterpret presidential powers so that he has greater control of the government in the White House

(the unitary executive theory).

1—Dismantle the “deep state” and revamp every aspect of the US government. NB: These policies could upset the balance of power between the three branches of the federal government and provoke a constitutional showdown by usurping congressional authority and cutting out any program he doesn’t like or whose proponents have angered him. This is a fascist plan

2—Prevent World War III and end the Russian invasion of Ukraine. NB: The fact that he has buddied up to Putin makes this highly unlikely.

3—Overhaul the entire US defense and intelligence bureaucracies

4—Ask Europe to refund the money we spend to rebuild the stockpiles we sent to Ukraine. NB: Good luck with that

J) Keep Medicare and Social Security intact. NB: Every single congressional Republican—and 43 Senate Republicans—sided with Big Pharma over the American people and blocked an amendment that would cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 for millions of Americans on private insurance. Thus, Big Pharma and the rich get richer at the cost of the health and lives of the poor. In March 2024, the Republican Study committee which represents 100% of House Republican leadership and 80% of their members proposed yet another budget that would cut the following by $4.5 trillion over 1-0 years: Medicare (transition Medicare to a premium support system that would raise premiums for many seniors), Social Security ($1.5 trillion in cuts) , the Affordable Care Act, the Children’s Health Insurance Initiative and increase prescription drugs (removing $35 insulin), energy and housing costs while raising the retirements age plus forcing $5.5. trillion in tax cuts for the very rich.

K) Immigration policy

1—Ban birthright citizenship 

2—End welfare for illegal immigants

3—Massive deportation of immigrants

L) Inflation

1—Build “Freedom Cities” on undeveloped federal land to lower cost of buying a home

2—Build vertical takeoff and landing vehicles

M) Shatter the left-wing censorship regime

L) Law enforcement

1—Increase investment in police personnel, stop illegal drugs

2—Death penalty for drug dealers and human traffickers

3—Overhaul federal standards on disciplining minors

4—Concealed carry reciprocity

M) DEI

1—Abandon DEI, terminate any offices, staff, and initiatives connected to DEI

2—Focus on anti-white racism rather than discrimination against people of color

N) Transgender and LBGQI+ rights: Terminate all gender affirming care at any age and terminating federal funding for any hospital or healthcare provider that participates in it

[tamamita]

Thats a good about Europeans having their own issues with rising right wingers but American right wingers specifically seek to export their beliefs to other countries in direct contractiction of their usual vocal platform of isloationism. European right wing probably sees them as a natural ally or at least useful idiots and vice versa. It's a sort of coalition building thing they do, like a perverted mockery of solidarity movements. This is part of why there is semi frequent news of American right wingers getting into trouble all around the world; they believe it's their Divinely ordained mission to export their reprehensible beliefs far and wide. They're all part of the grand american prptestant evangelical Cult that encomposes most of the religious right over here. This sort of christofascist belief is also why they and anyone trying to Court their favor tended to be chummy with putin; his favorite political philosopher who he quotes almost constantly was a Russian orthodox cristofascist named Ivan Illyin.

But this isn't exclusive to the US at all, this is something that Europeans do as well, attempting to export their right-wing ideologies to the US. So pinning it entirely on the US is dismissing the national issues that several Europeans countries are facing. For fuck sake, Italy is a fascist country again. Do you think the issues the Rromani people have in the EU are a direct result of the US and its political shift to right-wing populism? In fact, you see many European countries showing soldarity for each other's governments and often seeking to employ the same form of fascist system, often criticizing the US for any progressive laws that come into effect in their own country. The GOP has often praised these moves and wish to employ the same system. And no, Evangelicalism isn't always the main issue, traditionalists and nationalist values have always been an extremely intergral part of European societies. Most of these countries are either Catholic or Orthodox, and they work hand in hand to eliminate the growing flux of progressive/liberal forms of protestantism, even shunning the more conservative forms. Even if the US is erased from the equation, this will not eliminate western hegemony and european exceptionalism will still exist.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

From La Stampa (translated from Italian):

“Make Finance Great Again,” Trump family makes its own cryptocurrency and allies with Silicon Valley It will be called “World Liberty Financial,” will have tech investors and real estate developers from Chase Herro and Zak Folkman to Steve Witkoff inside. Sons Eric and Donald Jr. will coordinate. And his backer Tyler Winklevoss jokes, “Donald has been orange-pilled, indoctrinated.” Jacopo Iacoboni Sept. 17, 2024 Updated 11:00 a.m. 3 minutes of reading

They want to do a kind of “make finance great again,” along the lines of MAGA, the election slogan and the Make America Great Again campaign. Donald Trump's sons, Don Jr. and Eric, of course with their father's imprimatur, are about to launch a new cryptocurrency platform that will be called “World Liberty Financial,” and will allow users to make even massive transactions without a bank getting in the way and extracting fees (and with a very low level of tax tracking, it should be added). A couple of concepts familiar to bitcoin fans, for example, but which the Trump family now has ambitions to decline on a large scale. It is not certain that this marriage between Trumpism and decentralized finance, DeFi, is a harbinger of only positive developments. The board of “World Liberty Financial” will also consist of former crypto investors such as Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, and Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer and old friend of Trump. But thanks to documents filed with the U.S. Federal Election Commission that we have been able to read we know that in general the entire Trump campaign - Make America Great Again Inc. - received money not only from Musk, but cryptocurrency from billionaire twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who lead the cryptocurrency company Gemini: about $3.5 million in Bitcoin on July 19, the day after Trump's speech at the Milwaukee convention. The Winkelvosses also poured in money to America PAC, the tech investor-backed group that Musk helped launch in 2024 (Trump had bragged that Musk was giving him $45 million a month; Musk said his contribution is “at a much lower level”). Another co-founder of a cryptocurrency exchange, Jesse Powell, boss of Kraken, and venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (who created a16z) who have invested billions of dollars in cryptocurrency startups, have also made endorsements and poured money into Trump. In short, for the Trump family to embark on this big cryptocurrency project is a natural consequence of the fact that these are almost becoming a Republican asset in the campaign, and the “libertarian” wing of the old Gop is now a kind of very, very rampant ideologized “cyberlibertarianism.” The real boss of the “tech bros” according to many is not Elon Musk, but Peter Thiel. Zuckerberg's longtime partner in Facebook, co-founder of PayPal, Thiel's fortune has at least doubled during the Trump presidency. Palantir-a much-discussed software company variously accused of extracting data from Americans and profiling them-has managed to get a contract from the Pentagon. Other donors to MAGA Inc include Jacob Halberg, Palantir's princely analyst, and Trish Duggan, a wealthy Scientology funder and friend of the tech bros. Trump's vice presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, traveled to Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, celebrating a dinner at the home of BitGo CEO Mike Belshe, 100 people each pouring in between $3,300 a plate and a $25,000 roundtable. Trump in 2021 called bitcoin a “fraud against the dollar.” A few weeks ago, speaking in Nashvill at the bitcoin fan conference, he promised, “The United States will become the crypto capital of the planet.” Better than his friend Putin's Russia, although this Trump did not say so explicitly. The fact is that after his speech, Tyler Winklevoss ran on X (now the realm of cyberlibertarians) and joked that Donald had been “orange-pilled,” making a Matrix analogy, had been “indoctrinated,” or had finally seen the real reality behind the appearances.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Oliver Darcy at CNN:

Vladimir Putin’s information war in U.S. media paid off this weekend with a key victory halfway around the world. [...] As a Republican, Johnson is in a tough spot, politically speaking. While the Republican Party was once vehemently hawkish toward Russia, viewing the post-Soviet country as its chief adversary on the international stage, it has softened considerably in recent years and much of the party actively opposes sending additional dollars to Ukraine to continue fighting Russia. It was little more than a decade ago when Mitt Romney, then the party’s standard-bearer, famously declared Russia to be “our number one geopolitical foe.” In the years since, the party has dramatically changed its tune on Russia. A CNN poll conducted last summer found that a staggering 71% of Republicans do not support additional aid to thwart Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Much of the GOP’s softening toward Russia is owed to a near-total reversal in rhetoric from right-wing media personalities and outlets, prompted in large part by Donald Trump’s ascension to power in GOP politics. While the biggest players in right-wing media once fervently championed the foreign policy doctrines of the neo-conservatives, they now follow in the footsteps of Trump and vehemently reject the views once held by the George W. Bush administration. This transition is perhaps best exemplified by Tucker Carlson. The former Fox News host was once sharply critical of Putin, characterizing him in no uncertain terms as a cruel “dictator.” But in recent years, Carlson has reversed his stance, flooding the right-wing information space — which he once reigned as king over — with pro-Putin rhetoric that effectively amounts to Russian propaganda. Carlson’s stance was put on display in stark fashion recently when he traveled to Moscow to conduct a widely denounced softball chat with Putin and then proceeded to record a series of propaganda videos touting Russia’s supposed greatness.

While figures like Carlson have promoted Russia and Putin, they have simultaneously trashed Ukraine and its leader Volodymyr Zelensky, promoting conspiracy theories that the country interfered in the 2016 election and was hiding biological weapons labs. Carlson, for example, has likened Zelensky to vermin and vigorously spoken out against U.S. support for Ukraine. Right-wing commentators like Carlson have questioned why taxpayer dollars are being spent to help Ukraine defend its borders when the U.S. struggles to secure its own southern border (though a recent bipartisan bill intended to tackle both issues was rejected by hardline Republicans.)

[...] “The GOP’s shift away from support for Ukraine shows how in the Republican Party, everything flows downstream from the obsessions and priorities of right-wing propagandists,” Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the progressive watchdog Media Matters, told me Tuesday. “Tucker Carlson and his ilk wanted to back Putin’s invasion, their relentless lies won over the party’s base, and ultimately its elected officials have adopted their position.” “We’ve seen this same pattern time and again: Fox News and the like take basic concepts like ‘it’s a good idea to get vaccinated against the coronavirus’ and ���the January 6 insurrection was bad’ and turn them on their heads — and Republican elites inevitably follow,” Gertz added. “Governing based on what gets ratings for B.S. artists is no way to run a country.”

CNN's Oliver Darcy wrote in the Reliable Sources newsletter that the right-wing media's anti-Ukraine/pro-Putin disinformation campaign has had fatal consequences in the fight against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The Republican Party and much of the right-wing commentariat were once resolutely anti-Russia; however, beginning in the 2010s that began with Vladimir Putin's enactment of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and then Russian asset Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and eventual "Presidency", the GOP shifted from anti-Russia to pro-Russia (and consequently anti-Ukraine).