Russian propaganda makes Republicans weird

The US Department of Justice said yesterday that Russia is once again attacking the sovereignty of the United States by mounting yet another campaign to influence the outcome of a presidential election.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said a federal indictment alleges that a Tennessee company got millions in funding to spread Russian propaganda across social media. The effort has been at the direction of Russian leader Vladimir Putin since at least 2022. It involves a slew of fake news sites and a host of popular rightwing commentators.

The Tennessee company is not named in the indictment but it’s been identified as Tenet Media. It describes itself as “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.” Its roster includes high-profile rightwingers Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, Taylor Hansen and Matt Christiansen.

According to court filings, the objectives of the Russian dictator include reducing “international support for Ukraine,” bolstering “pro-Russian policies and interests” and influencing “voters in the US and foreign elections.” CBS News said Putin also wanted to conceal “the Russian government and its agents as the source of the content.”

The Justice Department said one of Putin’s goals is "securing Russia's preferred outcome in the election.” But I don’t think he could have imagined his actual accomplishment. What happens when you brainwash Republicans with years of Russian propaganda?

You make them weird.

To illustrate, let me take you back to February. Joe Biden was still running for reelection. He was recording a segment with late-night host Seth Meyers. They stopped at a popular ice cream spot in Manhattan. In front of TV cameras, Biden ordered a cone and ate it.

I don’t understand the arcana of the rightwing media apparatus. What I do know is Joe Biden eating an ice cream cone triggered his most extreme critics. They used it to infantilize the president, as if eating an ice cream cone made him less manly. Or they alleged that Biden was in the throes of dementia. Ice cream is soft and sweet. People with dementia like to eat soft and sweet things. Ergo, Biden had dementia.

What’s important here is that the full spectrum of the rightwing media apparatus pounced on him for eating an ice cream cone. Everyone from Jeanine Pirro and Jesse Watters on Fox to Clay Travis on talk radio to Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin worked to amplify their criticism. It was so loud even people outside their normal reach could hear it.

“All of which makes me wonder,” said Slate’s Fred Kaplan. “Have any of these people ever tasted ice cream?” He added: “It is well known that Biden has a penchant for Corvette sports cars, Ray-Ban sunglasses, Amtrak train rides, and now, yes, ice cream cones. These are all-American tastes. It’s this election season that’s getting very weird.”

It wasn’t the election season that was getting weird. It was the Republicans and their allies. That wasn’t clear in February, but by August it was. That’s when Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, before he became Kamala Harris’ running mate, said in an interview on “Morning Joe”: “We do not like what has happened where we can’t even go to Thanksgiving dinner because you end up in some weird fight that is unnecessary.

“Well, it’s true. These guys are just weird.”

But that was just the Democratic Party’s opinion. There still wasn’t something out there with the authority of the Justice Department to suggest an empirical reason why the Republicans turned weird.

Why do they stand against ice cream cones and other “all-American tastes”? (These include in vitro fertilization, recreational sex, Taylor Swift and the NFL, according to James Surowiecki.) Why would they field a nominee who’s a fraud, convicted felon, proven rapist and insurrectionist? Why would they pick a vice presidential nominee who can’t order a dozen donuts without looking like a humanoid robot?

Why?

Because they eat Russian propaganda all day long. They are so far outside the American mainstream they seem practically foreign.

I don’t mean to understate the home-grown weirdness of the Republicans. There’s plenty that’s strange about them without me bringing Russian propaganda into it. But I think it’s important to acknowledge how much weirder they are after nearly a decade of nonstop information warfare by the Kremlin. They are so weird that an old man couldn’t enjoy an ice cream cone without it being polarizing.

Pointing a finger at the Kremlin also blunts Donald Trump’s attempts to turn the tables. In a talk with Clay Travis, he said the Democrats are “the weird ones. Nobody’s ever called me weird. I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not.” That could work, but not if people understand that the problem isn’t one party being as good or bad as the other. The problem is one party’s weirdness being made that much weirder by a nation that stands against all Americans and our “all-American tastes.”

Putin hoped to rig the election in his and Trump’s favor.

But the effort may have backfired.

Instead of turning us against each other, Putin is turning Americans against those of us who no longer look and sound all American.