For years, Russian state media pundits have been claiming that the Democrats would assassinate Donald Trump and even previously proposed that Russia’s Federal Security Service should “start protecting our Donald.”
Unconstrained by facts or journalistic standards—striving to kill two birds with one stone—Russian propagandists are now blaming both the Democrats and Ukrainians for an attempt on Trump’s life. During Sunday’s broadcast of the show At Dawn on the Solovyov Live network, former New York Times correspondent John Varoli baselessly claimed, “The Democratic party is behind this attempted assassination! The Democratic party is doing everything to destroy Donald Trump!”
He added, “In all seriousness, I believe that the Ukrainian special services may be behind this—on orders from the White House.” Host Andrey Ponomar chimed in to add that since Ukrainians were allegedly able to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline, then the head of Ukrainioan military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, might also be linked to an attempt on Trump’s life.
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The host played an old clip from Saturday Night Live where Jim Carrey jokingly portrays President Joe Biden firing a gun while Ponomar suggests the president would resort to “shooting his opponents.” Ponomar claimed that Biden and the “deep state” are ready to drown America and the rest of the world in blood. Varoli concurred and said: “Joe Biden is a terrorist. He orders many terrorist acts against your country [Russia]. Under Joe Biden, the United States became the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world.”
Varoli added that the Secret Service and other U.S. intelligence agencies are controlled by the government, ludicrously suggesting that they are “full of liberals” and might have participated in an attack on Trump.
On another program the same morning, host Ivan Kamenev offered Trump a recipe for igniting a civil war in the United States—an outcome that is very much coveted by Moscow. Kamenev said, “I have an internal feeling that everything that is happening now depends on Trump. I will say something that is not politically correct. Trump has Biden’s balls in his hand, because everyone is waiting for his statement right now... It’s possible that he will gather the facts, come out and say, ‘This attempt was planned by Democrats, I have verifiable information about this. I believe that the current President and his team are behind it... And then there will be civil war!’”
Kamenev surmised, “What just happened turned the page to a new American reality.”
During state TV program Moscow. Kremlin. Putin, host Vladimir Solovyov bemoaned the volatile state of affairs in the United States and said, “We should be seriously concerned about Donald Trump’s life.” Later, in his own eponymous show Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, he proudly reminded everyone that he himself and many of his guests previously predicted that Trump would be assassinated. Solovyov accused the Secret Service of either being “unprofessional and stupid,” or being in on it and deliberately allowing the attacker to take his shot.
The TV host predicted Trump’s imminent victory in the upcoming presidential election, declaring that he is now unstoppable—barring a more efficient assassin.
Showcasing the photograph of the bloodied former president pumping his fist in the air, Solovyov praised him, describing his reaction as that of a seasoned “political animal.” The state TV host compared this event to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981 that led to his landslide victory in a presidential re-election. Solovyov added: “This is the moment after which Trump will obviously become president... This is it! This is a tragedy for Zelensky.”
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made a clumsy effort to link the funding of Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion to the attempted assassination of the former president, in a rambling post on her Telegram channel. She suggested that the money the U.S. is spending on Ukraine would be better spent on various branches of American law enforcement. Zakharova linked an attack on Trump to Ukraine’s alleged plot to eliminate Putin, stating that “both of them were prepared using American money.” She ended her post by proclaiming: “The bell is already tolling for Washington!”
