USEFUL IDIOTS?? Right Wing Influencers Duped into Russian Propaganda Campaign

so the Russian government has allegedly gotten millions of dollars to some of the biggest right-wing influencers in the world who just so happened to say things like this is psychotic Ukraine is the enemy of this country Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats I will stress again one of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine right and so that is Timo he's one of six big personalities at a Tennessee based company by the name of tenant media the biggest ones there besides him being the likes of Benny Johnson and Dave ruin with this I want to say one they along with tenant media itself are alleged to be just one key part of a massive Russian influence campaign targeting unwitting Americans all over the country and two to be clear neither tenant Media or anyone at the company is actually being accused of wrongdoing and I'm not saying Tim P was ordered to say those things about Ukraine part of this alleged Russian scheme could just be Russian operatives seeing creators saying things that they love pro-russian talking points and going let's make sure these guys don't have to worry about cash which funny enough is a tactic that Tim P himself talked about in the past though through a slightly different Veil so what happened with social media particularly YouTube where it's really easy you can have a foreign agent or even the government or some Corporation or whatever say this guy talks about things that we really like dump ad money into his channel through Google AdSense and they'll never know we were the ones funding them and you can't prove it because all of this actually has to do with the doj charging two employees of the Russian State controlled media Network RT with conspiracy to violate the foreign agents registration act and they're accused of secretly paying $10 million to a company in Tennessee that's now widely understood to be tenant media to spread nearly 2 ,000 English language videos on YouTube Tik Tok Instagram and x with one unidentified influencer for example reportedly getting paid $400,000 a month with that coming after a $100,000 signing bonus and so you know with all this you had AG Merrick Garland saying the subject matter and content of many of the videos were often consistent with Russia's interest in amplifying US domestic divisions in order to weaken us opposition to core russian interests particularly its ongoing war in Ukraine right and one of the examples provided is that the Tennessee company was reportedly told to blame Ukraine for an attack on a concert venue in Moscow back in March even though Isis had already claimed responsibility with then the company's founder allegedly replying by saying one of the contributors would be happy to cover it and there like I said tenant media isn't actually named in the indictment or being accused of anything right now but the company's co-founders right-wing influencer Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan allegedly knew the money came from Russia and actually with that we're now seeing that Chen's contract with the conservative Media Company Blaze has been terminated in light of the allegations but also very notably it's not clear that anyone besides her and Donovan were aware of what was going on at tenant right you also have the indictment alleging that at least two contributors were misled about the true source of the site's funding and so with all that you had P along with Johnson and ruin issuing statements on social media saying that they were victims and they hadn't done anything wrong with P for example saying should these allegations prove true I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims that being said we still do not know what is true as these are only allegations and finally adding Putin is a scumbag Russia sucks donkey ball also seemingly regarding his past comments on Ukraine he uh appeared to sarcastically right upon reflection I Now understand that Ukraine is our greatest Ally as the Bread Basket of Europe and a peaceloving people we cannot allow the fascist Russians to continue their crimes against humanity we must redouble our efforts and provide an additional $200 billion at once but really your opinion on Tim pool or any of these other creators aside right the focus of this story is on Ukraine that is a key thing you know because this tenant media thing it is just one small piece of the puzzle fact reportedly this whole Russian influence campaign has been codenamed doppelganger and according to the doj it's run by Sergey kirena a former prime minister who's now Putin's first Deputy Chief of Staff with that the department actually published a document produced for a Russian company by the name of the social design agency detailing something called The Good Old USA project and there the top objective was to quote increase the percentage of Americans who believe that the US has been doing way too much to support Ukraine with that they were apparently targeting certain groups in particular including residents of Swing States and conservative States US citizens of Hispanic descent and American Jews but then also lastly the quote community of American Gamers users of Reddit and image boards such as forchan and the documents describing this cohort as the quote backbone of right-wing Trends in the US segment of the internet and then besides that I should also say the document along with the others obtained and released by The doj explicitly talks about securing Russia's preferred outcome in the election because there while the party and the cidate names are redacted in the versions We have it's pretty clear from the context clues that this means Trump and the Republicans which you know absolutely makes sense because it lines up with what we've heard from intelligence officials in the past and just based on comments Trump has made in the past if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia will you protect us no I would not protect you in fact I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want also there you know I'll mention that there's a video going around today where Putin claims that he wants Harris to win but really we've seen most serious people having the impression that that was just a joke because really everything points to his real preference being Trump and in any case this comes as the Biden Harris Administration has announced a bunch of new measures to fight back against Russian efforts to influence this year's election with the state department for example designating five Russian state funded news outlets including RT as foreign government Mission so with that making it harder for employees of those Outlets to get visas to the US and then you have the doj seizing 32 internet domains that were reportedly used to spread Russian propaganda there notably the websites being designed to look like authentic news sites but they were actually fake also the treasury Department announced news sanctions including against RT's editor and Chief and nine other employees for the Department saying there that the Editor in Chief is a quote central figure in Russian government malign influence efforts and of course all of this is on top of other actions that we've seen recently like in March for example the treasury imposed sanctions on the social design agency and another Russian company accused of creating fake news sites to spread misinformation also law enforcement has reportedly even been investigating Americans who have worked with Russia's State television networks in the past with that actually leading to another indictment today of a guy who was an adviser to Trump's first campaign and who's now accused of moneya laundering and violating sanctions but of course you know with all this especially when you're talking about investigating Americans there's a question about where the line is some Americans especially amongst Trump supporters they see accusations that Russia is spreading disinformation as efforts to undermine their views to that point I mean you just have to take a quick look online especially on X you had Russia gate trending and you had people not even necessarily just Trump supporters saying things like just as in 2016 and 2020 Biden admin to activate Russia gate propaganda to manipulate us opinion ahead of the 2024 election which you know I will say this is kind of more of a general statement no matter where you are on the political Spectrum it never hurts to be a little bit skeptical but I also think it's important not to have such an open mind that your brain slips out and often what I see is for some reason when when the the topic of Russian interference pops up some people will automatically try to make it sound like you're saying oh the election machines those were tampered with by Russia what you're actually talking about are the bot and troll farms and the attempts to spread misinformation online which has been seen and proven also a big thing with this situation is you have people like Paul M Barrett the deputy director of the stern Center for business and human rights at NYU arguing the government has to walk a fine line to distinguish between foreign election interference and free speech and actually with that you had him telling the New York Times the dividing line is when you identify activity particularly concealed activity that is circumventing established regulations for how we try to prevent foreign interference in our election right and if that line is crossed he says it's not a reason to just run up the Free Speech flag and throw up your hands and we're helpless in the face of Vladimir Putin's very clever operatives and you know there I should also say that Biden officials have made a point to say they are not aiming to curb Free Speech they've actually been saying that Americans won't be investigated just for repeating or spreading stories they see on Russian State media and so far we've seen no indication that that's untrue yeah for now that is where the Situation's going to end though obviously we're going to keep our eyes on it and in the meantime I got to ask what are your thoughts on any and all of this whether it be around tenant media and the influencers there specifically or just the situation as a whole