In Russia and abroad, the Kremlin’s state media are waging info-warfare designed to undermine former Vice President Joe Biden while boosting Senator Bernie Sanders—and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
But Donald Trump is the intended beneficiary of the Kremlin campaign, and the ultimate goal is not to elect Sanders, much less Gabbard, despite militant messaging on their behalf. It’s to discredit the democratic process as a whole. And that’s where the English-language Russian state media take the lead.
For example, RT (formerly Russia Today) praised Gabbard (D-HI) for staying in the race—while demeaning Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for sticking around in spite of low ratings—and described the whole electoral process as “a rigged game.”
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One of RT’s offshoots, In The Now, claimed: “This nomination is getting stolen from Sanders, we are witnessing a robbery… Everything has already been done to make sure Sanders doesn’t have enough delegates.”
Describing all of the presidential candidates—except for Sanders—as “puppets,” and the electoral process as the “smoke and mirrors show,” In The Now host Anissa Naouai mocked Biden, razed Mike Bloomberg, blamed Warren for staying in the race too long to “keep delegates from Sanders… in a coordinated attempt to keep Sanders out.”
Naouai also proceeded to admit that she voted for Bernie Sanders, even though she doesn’t think that he can win, essentially encouraging other American voters to do the same.
Russian state media specialize in rage-inducing coverage of the U.S. elections, aiming to prompt Americans to vote for the unlikely contender out of sheer spite at “the establishment,” or to discourage people from voting at all.
While the methods utilized by the Kremlin’s operatives have been somewhat modified since the 2016 elections, the aspirations remain the same. The main objectives include undermining public faith in the U.S. democratic process, stoking divisions, promoting unrest, and lobbying for the re-election of Donald J. Trump, whose presidency continues to be considered highly beneficial for the Kremlin.
A bipartisan report released by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in 2019 found that in 2016 a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) urged voters not to vote for Hillary Clinton, not to vote at all, or to instead vote for the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
Jill Stein’s 2016 campaign was heavily promoted by RT. One year earlier, she attended the dinner celebrating RT’s 10th anniversary and was seated at the table with President Vladimir Putin.
In 2020, pro-Kremlin actors urge voters not to vote for Biden, not to vote at all, or to vote for Sanders. Curiously—but perhaps unsurprisingly—Jill Stein is rallying against Biden’s nomination.
Pro-Kremlin media are not as dedicated as they were in 2016 to creating their own agitprop. Instead, they more frequently amplify select talking points by publicizing handpicked social media content and useful statements made by various analysts, writers and politicians, including President Trump. Russian state media have been merciless when it comes to almost all of the U.S. presidential candidates, except for Trump, Sanders and Gabbard.
Tapping into Sanders’ appeal with Hispanic voters, RT’s Spanish-language outlets are targeting one of this key demographic with reports designed to boost his popularity, peppered with allegations of “rigged” U.S. elections standing in the way of his candidacy.
The following is a small sampling of Russian state media talking points and conspiracy theories amid the ongoing flood of propaganda that is likely to intensify in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election in November:
Stay home, voting is pointless:
RT: “Bernie or Biden—doesn’t matter. Trump’s election wasn’t a glitch and the trends say he’ll beat the Dems again… I didn’t bother staying up late for Super Tuesday… The results really were a matter of indifference. Rather than being a glitch, Trump is actually a ‘normal’ president (if we ignore his orange colour)—so the usual rules and trends apply… Trump isn’t unbeatable; only that, for him to be beaten, something out of the ordinary must happen.”
RT: “Do the Democrats really think they can beat Trump with this rogues’ gallery of political hacks? If they aren’t too young and inexperienced, like the ex mayor of South Bend, then they are too old and feeble-minded, like the lead candidate who just declared he was running for the US Senate. If they aren’t a bald-faced liar, like a certain fake native American, they are a brutally honest socialist who freely admits he will confiscate your hard-earned earnings once elected.”
RT: “The DNC knows this presidential race is lost.”
No one to vote for on the Democratic side:
Sputnik: “Old Commie, Dementia Patient Walk Into Convention.”
Elections are rigged:
RT: “American politics is a Ponzi scheme…”
Sputnik: “Trump Accuses Democrat Elites of ‘Rigging’ Primary Race Against Sanders.”
RT: “Fake JoeMentum: US media & Democrats are forcing a new pro-Biden narrative.”
RT: “Warren & Bloomberg lost big on Democrats’ Super Tuesday—or did they? Supporters of Bernie Sanders have accused Warren of staying in the race as a ‘spoiler,’ to split the progressive vote and harm Sanders in the race against the establishment favorite Joe Biden… If so, it would appear Warren succeeded, rather than failed, in her appointed task on Super Tuesday.
RT: “Last woman standing. Tulsi Gabbard plays a rigged game.”
Establishment conspires to control the outcome:
RT: “Obama’s ‘hidden hand’ in Biden’s surge tells us all we need to know about what kind of president he’ll be… Sanders might actually defeat Trump, claim the presidency and enact some of the policies that might seriously gut the US billion-dollar war machine… rejecting Sanders for a racist war-hawk like Biden makes little sense.”
RT: “Establishment Joe-mentum: Biden racks up Super Tuesday wins as party lines up behind him.”
Sputnik: “The Biden Bet: How Could Hillary Clinton Claw Her Way to the Presidency?”
Sputnik: “Having served two presidential terms, Obama is not allowed to run again, but he could send in his wife Michelle… perhaps the DNC and Obama’s real objective is for Michelle Obama to enter the 2020 race so Obama may once again gain control.”
RT: “Obama’s national security and spying apparatus is only the latest section of the Democratic party establishment to line up behind Biden.”
RT in Spanish: “Sanders: Establishment strikes back… Javier Rodríguez Carrasco wonders if these results are decisive and if there is an orchestrated campaign within the Democratic Party to remove Sanders from the electoral race.”
RT: “What really matters [for the Democratic party] is not beating Trump, it's ensuring that the rich stay rich and the rest of us suffer.”
RT: "Trump serves the class interests of the Democratic establishment way more than Bernie Sanders ever could... They're fine with another Trump presidency... They don't actually do anything. They are more threatened by Bernie Sanders than they are by Donald Trump. They're happy, they're perfectly fine with another Trump presidency."
RT: “There is collusion between the DNC and the media.”
RT: “Pete Buttigieg was a manufactured candidate… dropping out in coordination with the Democratic party to help Joe Biden, same with Amy Klobuchar, and you also have Elizabeth Warren staying in the race in order to try to obstruct Sanders as a spoiler.”
Biden’s mental fitness is in question:
RT: “The cantankerous and erratic candidate…mistakes, poor judgment…The septuagenarian has issued a string of insults and exhibited episodic aggression, erupting at the slightest challenges.”
Sputnik: “Joe Biden’s once-moribund presidential bid came back from the dead in the past week, but there has also been an increasingly growing flow of questions regarding his mental health…cognitive decline… He appears to be suffering from brain damage… anticipate his complete mental collapse.”
RT: “The political lifer seems to be cognitively unraveling before the American public’s eyes.”
RT: “Joe Biden, 77, a man who appears to be exhibiting all the trademark signs of senility.”
Sputnik: “Watch: A Proud ‘Obiden Bama Democrat’ Joe Biden Says ‘We Can Only Re-Elect Trump’: Joe Biden’s never-ending flow of verbal gaffes is taking increasingly blatant forms and drawing more and more attention to his cognitive abilities.”
RT: "Trump really looks super presidential against Joe Biden... Donald Trump is the greatest president of my lifetime, and if anybody thinks that any of these democratic clowns—any of them— could have done 10 percent of what he's done for this country and the world, it's a delusion. The Democratic Party is dead. Moribund. Through. Pipe dream. Forget it. It's over. You have nothing."
Trump’s corruption is a “hoax,” Biden must be investigated:
RT: “Will the pretense for the impeachment of President Trump, the elephant in the House hearings and Senate trial, ever get an actual hearing? Will the dealings of Biden’s son Hunter with the Ukrainian energy giant Burisma, and the former VP’s possible role in the arrangement, ever get addressed in the establishment media?”
Unrest, retaliation:
Sputnik: “Bernie's Supporters Will Unleash Hell on DNC if It Deprives Him of Nomination Again: it's unlikely that Bernie's supporters "will tolerate this and go quietly" like they did in 2016… We could see a shakeup in the Democratic Party in the event they use the same machinations to deny Sanders the nomination, even a potential split of the party or a third party run by Sanders.”
Sputnik: “The vocal and energetic Sanders supporters... would either sit out or vote for Trump in protest of another Bernie loss.”
One lesson from all this: In 2020, Americans should be well aware that by spreading divisive rhetoric, exacerbating internal divisions, and disseminating conspiracy theories they are helping Russia and not their chosen candidate.
Russia is highly proficient at harnessing the power of social media and audiovisual communications. RT seemed less than pleased with Twitter’s decision to add a “manipulated” tag to a video retweeted by President Donald Trump and shared by his social media director Dan Scavino. The video was deceptively cropped, creating a false appearance that Biden had endorsed President Trump. It was also featured by RT’s sister outlet, Sputnik.
RT’s senior writer opined that “the entire argument that fake news or ’manipulated’ social media posts swayed US elections has always been an insult to Americans’ intelligence.” On the other hand, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Rossiya Segodnya, RT and Sputnik shared her true opinion of Americans in 2017, when she said: "Their level of knowledge is lower than the baseboard... Americans have such low education and understanding of the world, so off the charts, it’s way below the baseboard.”
RT’s main concern is clearly not with defending Americans from “insulting” labels on fake or manipulated media, but with the way such designations undermine the Kremlin’s deceptive influence campaigns. On their own turf, Russian state media pundits, experts and politicians openly admit that information warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia, has been going on for decades.
Appearing on the Russian language state TV show Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, Konstantin Zatulin, a leading figure in Putin’s United Russia party, said: “We waged this fight for many years, except it wasn’t as technologically advanced. We had no Internet, or fast-acting Wikipedia, or the rest of it.” Another guest on the same show, Boris Yakemenko, asserted that World War III between the United States and Russia is already in progress and is playing out in the social media.
Analyst Dmitry Drobnitsky added that Russia should be proactive in fighting info-wars in the West: “If we say this is war, then using the analogies of WWII… we need to work behind enemy lines, where they least expect us.” The host, Vladimir Soloviev agreed and said: “RT and Sputnik are working brilliantly.”
The Kremlin enjoys the spoils of its info-wars, but fears reciprocity. Appearing on a state-run television station TVC, RT's Simonyan said that modern information warfare is no less important than nuclear weapons. She complained that the most watched TV channel in Russia is YouTube, which is controlled by the Americans. Anticipating the boomerang effect of Russia’s info-wars abroad, Simonyan exclaimed: “They’ll blow us up from within.” After all, that’s what the Kremlin has in mind for America.
