Here Comes the Russian Attack on the Midterms

Still images from a video that Russian disinformation operators have been circulating on social media. The video purports to be from Mother Jones, but it is not. Mother Jones.  

A few issues back, as I was (of course) promoting my new book, How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America, I posed a question: Will Putin meddle in the midterms? We now have the answer. It’s yes. And one piece of evidence of that is a crazy and fake Mother Jones video posted on X.

MS NOW and The New York Times recently reported that a Russian disinformation operation—dubbed Matryoshka or Storm-1679 by disinformation trackers—has started pumping into US social media platforms false material aimed at the congressional elections. In 2024, as I chronicle in my book, Matryoshka was one of several of Putin’s disinfo networks that covertly spread posts with bogus and derogatory information targeting Kamala Harris that were disguised as legitimate news stories from mainstream media outlets. (She had an abortion when she was 17. She was exhibiting early-onset Alzheimer’s. Her grandfather was a communist. Her family was connected to Pfizer and Big Pharma.)

In recent weeks, Matryoshka has created and disseminated videos of Hollywood celebrities manipulated with AI to make it appear they are slamming Democrats and encouraging votes for Republicans. One video showed actor Jamie Lee Curtis purportedly bashing Democrats for pushing pro-trans propaganda. Additional posts used doctored footage of Sarah Jessica Parker, Ed Begley Jr., Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron, and others.

According to @antibot4navalny, a group of anonymous activists who monitor Russian disinformation, Matryoshka has gone beyond these absurd celebrity deepfakes that disparage the Democratic Party to denigrate specific senatorial candidates, generating and posting fake videos that appear to be CNN reports with damaging information on these Democrats. James Talarico (Texas) “despises” Hasidic Jews because they don’t allow gender affirmation treatment. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) has a business that has “caused the bee population in Ohio to decline by a factor of nine.” Jon Ossoff (Georgia) has “called for a complete halt to military aid to Israel and for all resources to be redirected to Ukraine.” And so on.

While reporting on this new onslaught of Russian disinformation, I reached out to @antibot4navalny on Signal. The group shared information on the Matryoshka campaign and also sent me this message: “Congrats to Mother Jones on getting impersonated.”

Of the dozens of phony news reports Matryoshka has been spreading, one was a supposed Mother Jones video. It claimed that the Democratic Party had paid $289 million to Mark Thompson, the head of CNN, so the cable news network would run reports that “promote gender transition among minors.” According to this fake video, Anonymous, the hacktivist collective, had broken into Thompson’s emails, found evidence of this deal, and shared it with us at Mother Jones. The video included a made-up quote from Clara Jeffery, the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, calling this a “great gift from Anonymous, which exposes the moral decay of the Democrats and the Democratic media that collaborate with them.” (You can read my full report on this fake video here.)

Of course, none of this was true. And it’s absurd to think the DNC has $289 million lying around that it can use to pay off the guy who runs CNN. Just as it’s absurd to believe Sarah Jessica Parker thinks the Democrats are Nazi whores. Is anyone going to buy this?

But believability is not the point. My hunch is these fakes are warm-up exercises—the Russian disinformation trolls dipping their toes into the pool. One tactic of propagandists is to throw a lot of crap at the wall and see what sticks—in this case, what goes viral and is embraced by authentic users (that is, real people, not bots). So some of their pitches will be wild, not fastballs down the middle. Their attacks will probably become more sophisticated. But these early jabs indicate they know which contests to zero in on (which is no mystery) and are following the lead of Republicans and leaning into anti-trans sentiment, which was exploited by the Trump campaign in 2024.

It’s widely assumed in politics that the best time to hurl mud at an opponent is close to Election Day, when there’s not much time for the target to respond and when the negative information will receive more attention. So Putin’s disinformation specialists have several weeks to prepare their most potent hogwash.

Putin’s information warriors might have their sights set on more than individual Democratic candidates. Russian influence operations in the past have focused not just on helping Donald Trump but on sowing discord and exacerbating pre-existing conflict within America’s divisive politics. If there’s a crisis in the midterms—if Trump attempts to interfere in the election process, claims contests have been rigged, or refuses to accept results—these Russian disinformation networks will be quick to pour oil on the fire and amplify conspiracy theories and any chaos that ensues.

As I’ve noted before, the US government is not prepared to deal with a disinformation assault from Russia (or from any other foreign adversary), given that the Trump administration has dismantled the various offices and units that once tracked foreign disinformation and sought to counter it. This includes shuttering the FBI’s foreign influence task force, the Foreign Malign Influence Center of the intelligence community, and the remnants of the Global Engagement Center at the State Department. Trump has unilaterally surrendered in this information war, practically inviting Putin to attack the election. (Hmmm, I wonder why.)

There’s no telling how extensive the Russian effort may become—or if it will have any impact. There are plenty of domestic influence operations underway—such as Elon Musk’s plan to dump $100 million into the midterms to boost Republicans, and super-PACs financed by crypto and AI barons spending tens of millions on negative ads against Democrats who don’t bend the knee to them. But what Moscow’s recent moves do show is that Putin, after a decade of waging covert operations to assist Trump, still sees him as his guy and that Trump’s claim that all talk of Russian intervention is a “hoax” is itself the hoax.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

I’ve had some very rewarding podcast conversations about How Russia Won, which I noted in the last issue. This week I got to talk to the inimitable Heather Cox Richardson about the book. It was a great discussion, and she was quite supportive of it. That’s not a surprise since she read it early on and provided a wonderful blurb: “The definitive account of Putin’s gray-zone warfare against the United States and how Trump and his loyalists have abetted that warfare for a decade.”

This is for anyone in the Washington, DC, area. Politics and Prose, a great independent bookstore, will host a book talk and signing for How Russia Won today—September 26—at 3 p.m. It will be at the main outlet on Connecticut Avenue. Hope to see you there.

If this were the Most Horrific Comment of the Week contest, there’d be no choice but to hand the award to Donald Trump. At the United Nations General Assembly, he casually bloviated, “I have a big decision to make…Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly?…Do I drive them into hell?…I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election.”

This threat of genocide—not the first that Trump has spewed—drew media notice. But not enough. An American president openly pondering the annihilation of another country, as opposed to the defeat of a wartime foe, is heinous. It’s a measure of how far the nation has descended into a moral abyss in the Trump era that such a remark does not shock and so quickly fades from the public discourse.

Joe Gruters, the chair of the Republican National Committee, made a rather stupid promise about the midterms: “We're gonna put the president front and center, and we expect that to resonate with the American people.”

The Democratic response ought to be: Thank you. Gruters might have missed the news that Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), the party’s gubernatorial candidate in the Sunshine State and a former Trump ultra-fanboy, recently stripped references to Trump from his campaign website. Not so front and center, eh?

Appearing on Steve Bannon’s vodcast, Peter Navarro, the current Trump aide who served four months in prison after being convicted of contempt of Congress, railed against journalists who dare report that Trump’s war in Iranx is not a raging success: “These people are treasonous. ‘Oh, the war’s going badly.’ Whatever you feel about the war, you don’t say stuff that is going to be repeated instantaneously by the Iranian media.”

Truth, as the saying goes, is the first casualty of war, and Navarro wants to imprison anyone who tries to save it.

It’s often been observed that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is one of the dumbest members of Congress. And he seems committed to being top dog in that category. The other day, he strode onto the Senate floor and said:

Many airline pilots, flight attendants, and air traffic controllers are part of the furry community. Lord help us. It's terrifying when you think about this. When you walk onto a commercial flight, it’s possible that the pilot flying your plane could have a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal. You can’t make this up.

I bet some within the aviation sector are BDSM aficionados. Maybe some have foot fetishes. Or are frustrated celibates. Or are in throuples. What’s he proposing? Every pilot must fill out a sexual activity disclosure form? Remember, this guy has a vote in determining what we should do about AI.

Not long ago, Rep. Tom Emmer, the GOP majority whip, was celebrating House Republicans’ investigation of Hunter Biden.

This week, Emmer declared that it is a waste of time to investigate Donald Trump Jr.’s connection to the Putin crony who covered hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills for his recent wedding celebration because Junior “is a private citizen and businessman.”

In the MAGA GOP, brazen hypocrisy is not a bug but a feature. A big feature.

We’ve all watched sleazy politicians refuse to answer a journalist’s question and get away with it. That did not happen when Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) was grilled by Jim DeFede, a local CBS News reporter in Miami. A clip from an interview he conducted with her in January 2024 was recirculated on social media this past week. Though these comments from Salazar were over two years old, the judges ruled they deserved to be honored.

DeFede pressed her on why she repeatedly claimed credit for funds her district received due to legislation she had voted against—such as President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill. This has been a common move pulled by Republican members of the House and Senate.

When DeFede presented one example involving a $650,000 grant for small businesses, Salazar answered, “Right now, you have to give me more details.” DeFede tossed out another instance related to the CHIPS Act, and she retorted, “I need to ask my staff.” And when he pointed out that the $40 million in federal dollars she boasted she had delivered to her constituents had included money provided by measures she voted against, Salazar replied, “That was, I think, last cycle. I cannot really remember right now.”

Salazar is in a tough battle for reelection against Democrat Elliott Rodriguez, a former Miami television news anchor. So tough that she has even blasted Trump for his cruel mass deportation crusade. Her “I have to ask my staff” answer could help tip the race to her foe. It certainly was enough to win her this week’s prize.

Two musical surprises:

There was much mail from OurLanders who had received their copies of How Russia Won.

Carole Vann sent a note and a pic:

It’s here. And I had a great birthday at Ojo Caliente. I’m finishing Two Years Before the Mast. Then I’ll start.

Iris Vander Pluym wrote:

I got the book! I got the book! I also saw you on Wajahat Ali’s show. So great! However. While I do appreciate the signed bookmark—especially since it bears a signature almost as indecipherable as mine—I wonder whether your travels will bring you back to NYC to sign my book for real.  

While you are in NYC, there's also that outstanding matter of your colonoscopy. I know a guy, ‘swhat I'm sayin’. Besides, during the prep the day before, wouldn't you rather trash a New York hotel room bathroom than your own? Live like a rock star for a day? (I know I sure would!)

That signed bookmark was actually a bookplate. The back can be peeled off, so the bookplate can be attached to the front of the book. Still, happy to sign any book directly. No plans for a NYC book event yet. Though I am overdue for a colonoscopy, I think I’ll suffer through the prep at home and eschew the Keith Moon approach.

Doug Greenberg raised a smart point:

Your book is important, well-presented, and a damn good read. Congratulations. That said, I want to point out that one reason the Russia issue was squelched by MAGA, even if it's only a minor, contributing factor, is that too many “smart” people who might have known better hopped on the “it’s a hoax” bandwagon. I am referring to individuals identifying on the left who dismissed the allegations of collusion because they believed these were conjured by the corporate Democrats as an excuse for and a distraction from Hillary's shortcomings as a candidate in 2016.

The roll call of supposed progressives who ridiculed “Russiagate” included Matt Taibbi, Katie Halper, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, Krystal Ball, Kyle Kulinski, Max Blumenthal, Steve Rendall of FAIR, the late Stephen F. Cohen, and The Nation—and even Noam Chomsky. You know all this. The real tell came when these people embraced uncritically then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s misleading four-page “summary” of the Mueller report in March 2019, in which he falsely claimed Trump was completely exonerated by the inquiry. 

I believe that the underlying psychology here was a textbook case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” i.e., that if the hated mainstream Democrats pushed the Russia narrative, it must be suspect. Also, of course, there was a grain of truth in the allegation that most Democrats exaggerated the effects of the Russian efforts as a way to dismiss the need for the party to admit its own shortcomings and mistakes.

But just as a lot of people have difficulty metaphorically walking and chewing gum simultaneously, these supposed progressives might have been able to both condemn the Democrats' fixation on Russiagate as “the reason we lost” and admit that the skullduggery between the Trump campaign and Russian officials was real.

In closing, I will make two additional comments. First, back in 2016 the Russian propaganda outlet RT was going full bore, and its skill in attracting American leftists to its narratives was considerable. RT combined some real, progressive-slanted journalism with a torrent of propaganda and false information, along the way convincing (too) many people on the left that it was a legitimate source of news. My second observation is that I believe that somehow, deep down, too many people on the left have not quite “gotten it” that Russia is not the Soviet Union and that residual “underdog” sympathy for a flawed/failed system that at least ideologically opposed global capitalism and US hegemony no longer has any justification. 

Doug, that’s a good summation, though I’m not certain that “most” Democrats oversold the Russian intervention.

Mary Jane Huth had a question:

I read somewhere that Don Jr.’s new wife’s father was Epstein’s banker. This seems to be important news we all should know? Why is this news nowhere? Please let me know if this is true.

Snopes says this is “Mostly True”:

[Bettina] Anderson is the daughter of Harry Loy Anderson Jr., who owned Palm Beach National Bank and Trust. Records showed that Epstein held several accounts at that bank beginning in 1991…Epstein kept his money at several different financial institutions, and Harry Loy Anderson was Palm Beach National Bank and Trust's president, so it’s unclear how involved he would have been in Epstein’s finances or to what extent he could be described as “Epstein's banker.”

“Summer is over? No more beaches? No more water to play in? No more smelly dead fish?”
“That’s right, Moxie. We’ve had 14 great summers together.”
“Will it be summer again soon?”
“It will be summer again next year.”
“So we’ll have summer then.”
“Yes, Moxie, yes we will.”