Can you imagine if the only major media company in the United States was Fox News? That’s basically what media is in Russia, The Daily Beast columnist Julia Davis, who also founded Russian Media Monitor, tells Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal.
This is why it’s disturbing to think that the country allegedly not only meddled in our election process, but its government-controlled media is rooting for Trump and Republicans to win again in 2022 and 2024 so that ultimately, as Davis puts it, “the United States will disintegrate and different states will fall away.”
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If Russia is able to have some control of our leaders and a large portion of citizens in this country, she explains, the U.S. can stop policing other countries and Putin can basically have free rein. One such person seemingly leading that charge is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, whose show constantly mirrors the talking points in Russia.
He could be preparing the relationship with the Kremlin ahead of another Trump win, which is what Russian media desperately wants. In return, Russia is able to get into the heads of Americans.
“If you listen to the Russian media one of the prevailing themes is how stupid and uneducated Americans are and how ignorant they are about the world. So they have quite an instrument of influence if Tucker can convince the so-called conservative base that counteracting Putin is not in our best interest and NATO is of no use because it serves Putin very well,” Davis explains, in relation to Ukraine and the rest of world. “Tucker has been pretty persistent on that. I’ve heard on many shows now he’s saying, ‘Why are we not on Russia’s side?’”
The two also discuss even more unsettling topics like how Russian media would love to see a U.S. civil war and the fact that the Kremlin has no plans to stop its disinformation warfare.
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