Russia's Useful Idiots Don't Seem Very Upset About Being Russia's Useful Idiots

Allegedly!

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OK let’s talk about the latest indictment for Russian interference, and the MAGA influencers who don’t seem THAT upset that Russia allegedly has been using them as its unwitting useful idiots.

Hoo boy, it’s been Russian indictment-thirty in Merrick Garland’s Justice Department this week!

Two new indictments came out yesterday, one against 2016 Trump adviser Dmitri Simes and his wife Anastasia, for sanctions violations and money laundering. Another was a superseding indictment against Russian hackers trying to break into Ukrainian computers. Yet another indictment two days ago was related to a program the feds calls “Doppelganger,” an influence campaign to damage support for Ukraine, influence elections, freak Americans out about the border, inflame racial tensions and more. (In other words, the typical contents of just about any show on Fox News!)

But the indictment everybody’s talking about, which is perversely funny, albeit of course disturbing, is the indictment of two young Russian operatives, “Kostya” and “Lena,” employees of the Russian state-run RT network, who helped found and prop up a Nashville-based right-wing media company called Tenet Media, which recruited some of MAGA’s best and brightest stars (terms used loosely) to secretly spread Russia’s propaganda among the MAGA faithful.

It was so secret that, according to the indictment, the onscreen talent (more loose language) wasn’t even in on the joke!

Indeed, during Tenet Media’s heyday — before this week, we guess, when it still existed, before YouTube started shutting down all its shit, and before its unindicted co-founder and MAGA celeb Lauren Chen got fired from Blaze-TV and Turning Point USA unpersoned her — it employed such MAGA luminaries as Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Tayler Hansen and Matt Christiansen, all of whom were out there preachin’ the good word with their video content for this plucky startup that was 90 percent secretly funded by Russian shell companies.

Oops!

The indictment underscores how stupid these MAGA media celebrities were, when they were approached with this super-cool opportunity to make a few videos per week in exchange for (in a couple cases) millions of dollars, to be paid by a completely fake man named EDUARDO GRIGORIANN! (Who sounds like a character out of the late Norm MacDonald’s famous moth joke.)

And they were like “sure!” Because they’re morons.

To be fair, according to the indictment, “Commentator 1” — who has been identified by journalists as Dave Rubin — was like (paraphrase) "Waaaaaait a minute! Are you sure EDUARD GRIGORIANN is a real guy?" and the Russians and their cutouts were like "Yeah here's a Glamour Shot of him and some facts you won't find anywhere on Google because he's fake," and Rubin was like "OK cool, just making sure!"

And indeed, “Commentator 1” made $400,000 a month to make four videos per week for EDUARD GRIGORIANN! “Commentator 2,” AKA Tim Pool? $100,000 per video.

EDUARD GRIGORIANN!

For a fuller recounting of that indictment, check out my piece at Wonkette from Thursday morning.

Let’s Look At The Moral High Ground Angle Here!

That’s it, that’s the Moral High Ground angle. Fuck is wrong with these people? Jesus.

No but really, when I started this site, I said we’d be talking about the world-historical temper tantrum that (mostly) white conservative (authoritarian, fascist) Christians are having over their loss of influence and power. That this is not just something that’s happening in the United States, it’s a global temper tantrum.

Because I launched in June, there hasn’t been much time to delve into that side of things, considering the upcoming American election and such. But without going deep, suffice it to say there is a longstanding thing between the MAGA movement, the American Christian right and Russia. There are lots of reasons for this, but for now let’s just posit that white supremacist Christian authoritarians and fascists in Russia have a lot in common with their counterparts in Hungary and the rest of Europe, and their counterparts in the United States, and beyond. They’re on the same side, generally, from a 36,000-foot view.

Also, in a big way starting in 2016, Russia has been fucking with American elections, to sow chaos, and to prop up leaders (Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans) whose vision for the world more or less aligns with theirs.

And no matter how much right-wing media and MAGA try to rewrite extremely recent history, the then-Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, in the most through report on the subject that’s been done, found that yes, Blanche, the 2016 election attack was for Trump’s benefit, and yes, there was collusion, by any sane definition of the word.

When you look back on Paul Manafort’s actions during that campaign — and his efforts to cover them up — it becomes clear that we may never know the extent of that collusion in 2016.

Now Let’s Revisit Benny Johnson, Tim Pool And The Rest Of Our Useful Idiots!

Again, according to the indictment, none of the pretty faces who made videos for Tenet Media were in on the secret of who they were really working for.

Imagine for a moment that you had just found out that you, in your life, were being utilized as a useful idiot or asset by Russia, easily one of the most evil, murderous, foul, bigoted, terroristic regimes on the planet. You would be horrified. I would be horrified. All decent people would be horrified.

In light of that, let’s look at some statements from the unwitting spokesmodels for Russia Inc. in response to this indictment, and see how horrified they sound. Granted, these statements from the VERY FOOLED content creators are, I am sure, very lawyered. But they’re written in their own voices, and they’re revelatory in what they say, and what they don’t say.

Gonna start with idiot gay conservative Dave Rubin, who you might remember as the guy who two years ago announced that he and his husband were going to become parents through surrogacy, at which point conservative MAGA wackjobs — including those who professed to be Dave’s friends — proceeded to tell him and his husband they were hellbound perverts and sickos. He’s got a lot of self-respect, y’all.

Two notable things in Dave’s statement: He says he and the other talking heads are the victims. True, if the indictment is correct!

He then provides a screengrab from the indictment of the incident where he was slightly skeptical of who EDUARD GRIGORIANN! was, but was totally mollified when the founders sent him an obviously fake one-sheet on the obviously fake guy.

Dave Rubin’s statement, therefore, appears to simply confirm he’s quite stupid.

Benny Johnson’s and Tim Pool’s statements are more interesting, I think.

Summary of Benny:

Benny is also pretty stupid, as he appears to think “leaked” is the same as “unsealed,” when it comes to indictments. Benny is disturbed by all of this, however! Benny is the victim of this ALLEGED scheme! ALLEGEDLY!

AND DON’T YOU BE SAYIN’ OTHERWISE, GONNA HEAR FROM BENNY’S LAWYER IF YOU DO!

Lord have mercy.

And now Tim Pool. Bless Tim Pool’s heart. He tweeted, deleted, and then retweeted a “corrected” version of his statement, don’t know why, don’t care:

To summarize: Tim Pool is a victim. He didn’t take orders from NOBODY, though. (Benny notably did not make that claim. Rubin didn’t quite make it either.) But these are only allegations, Tim says! (Maybe it’s not true that his paychecks were coming from Russia?) “Putin is a scumbag, Russia sucks donkey balls,” he says, and in conclusion, please eat his Irish ass.

What a cool and dignified guy. It’s clear why Trump gave him an interview. (To be fair, Trump will sit down with pretty much any loser white conservative dude who bats their eyes at him. Even self-avowed Nazis.)

Matt Christiansen and Lauren Southern haven’t said anything interesting, at least not in statements posted to Twitter. Tayler Hansen had a statement where he asserted his sole editorial control, said he’s shocked, and said something weird and conspiratorial about “some level of coordination going on as i’ve been receiving inquires [sic] from MSM and Leftist outlets in unison since the moment the indictment dropped.”

Whatever, bro.

Don’t They Seem Like Really Upset, Though? ALLEGEDLY?

To recap a theme I’ve been hammering: White conservative Christians and their overlapping MAGA counterparts suffer from Disney Princess Syndrome and Main Character Syndrome, where they are only and always the heroes and/or victims of every situation — really important heroes and victims — but never possibly the villain.

Those fuckers up there are saying the right things, technically. They are victims, and they are APPALLED, they tell you, APPALLED! Also Russia sux donkey balls.

But look, and The Moral High Ground isn’t the first to point this out, but Russia didn’t have to go very far or work very hard to find a bunch of weirdo MAGA creep media personalities more than happy to blab out propaganda for them, whether they technically knew they were doing it or not.

Again, it’s that thing about how these people are kinda totally aligned anyway already! (Which is what Marco Rubio, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, basically said out loud with his mouth last night on Hannity. It was his way of arguing that this isn’t a big deal. These are just Americans who happened to agree with the Kremlin on all these things! These are opinions that exist!)

Russia doesn’t exactly co-opt people who don’t pretty much already share their hopes and dreams and common enemies. (LGBTQ+ people, women, liberals, people of decency, integrity, intelligence …)

So quite frankly, does it really matter if these people had full editorial control over their content, if they were just going to shit out Kremlin talking points anyway? Or can we ignore that part of these statements as not important?

To cite one major example, Heather Cox Richardson notes that Tim Pool has been a huge opponent of American financial support for Ukraine, and that by last night, he was joking about how “they” are “saying” he’s been funded by Russia, and pretending he suddenly loves Ukraine now. Jay Kuo notes that Pool has called Ukraine the “greatest threat to America and the world.”

Extremism researcher and journalist Jared Holt wrote yesterday on his Substack that RT saw these MAGA windsocks as a “natural fit” for what they were trying to do. That’s why they recruited MAGA figures they had worked with previously (Chen and her husband Liam Donovan, the other founder of Tenet Media) to seek out Benny and Tim and the other losers. And Russia was happy to pay them shitloads of money!

Holt noted that people like Benny, Tim and the rest are big nobodies to normal people, but in the weird MAGA subculture of societal rejects, they’re Taylor Swift. These people have major access to the highest echelons of MAGA power, including, again, the felon former president.

This is who Russia, according to this indictment, used its cutouts to recruit as unwitting mouthpieces. And, according to this indictment, it was fun and easy!

So sure, according to this indictment, and according to their statements, they were victims.

But let’s also consider that maybe, just maybe, they’re villains too.

Whatever they are, they don’t seem that broken up about this whole turn of events.

The Kremlin’s Main Squeeze Sure Is Broken Up About It, Though.

Not about what Russia did, of course! He’s broken up about the evil Kamala-Harris-led Biden Justice Department doing election interference, by indicting Russians! But of course he is!

He is scuh-reaming on his brokedick Twitter knockoff Truth Social website.

Uh, read all that dementia-babbling if you want.

If we’re hitting all the high points correctly, he is upset that COMRADE KAMALA is doing ELECTION INTERFERENCE by making HER PERSONAL Justice Department indict two employees of Russia’s state-owned media network for the crime of … oh fuck that traitor, we’re not reading it all. You can see what he’s saying.

Meanwhile, cowardly rat-faced seditionist Senator Josh Hawley told Laura Ingraham last night that this is the “third straight election” that the Democrats have “tried this,” and that this “isn’t about foreign inteference by Russia, this is a smokescreen for domestic interference by our Deep State and the Democrat[ic] Party.” He went on to accuse the FBI of trying to rig the 2016 and 2020 elections against Trump. You know how famously liberal and anti-fascist the FBI is.

Paint-huffing MAGA conspiracy theories about the deep state and the FBI aside, notice how Trump frames Russian participation in our elections as entirely legitimate, while Hawley frames Democratic participation in our elections as illegitimate?

That oughta tell you everything about these motherfuckers you could ever need to know.

All the villains in this story pull this shit because they are 100 percent certain they are divinely entitled to do so, that the rules do not apply to them, that to interfere in and rig our elections is simply a necessary means to their righteous end of stealing and preserving the power they think is their birthright.

It’s our jobs as patriotic Americans to show them and their Russian sponsors on November 5 just how hard they can go fuck themselves.

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