Right-wing influencers were duped to work for covert Russian influence operation, US says
The accusations mark the third straight presidential election in which U.S. authorities have unveiled politically charged details about the Kremlin’s attempted interference in U.S. politics.
Duped? How? By getting paid?
Oopsie I was just so confused by this giant bag of cash!
I'm sure at least some of them truly believed they were worth more than shit
Be nice to me, I'M the victim here!
My job dupes me into coming in every night by uploading some wacky numbers to my bank account every two weeks. I fall for it every time.
The whacky numbers in your bank account are quite convenient to have tbf
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.
TN based. So again, "duped".
How does one dupe the willing?
Bags of money!
Apparently they were duped into thinking the money came from pro-Russian US conservatives or something like that instead of directly from the source.
I disagree that they were duped in any way since the pro Russian messaging was still pro Russian messaging and the source of the money is not important.
Maybe they mean dupe as in duplicate, as in doubling the value of their bank account.
The term that they're looking for is "useful idiot," except that being handed bags of money and Russian talking points to read on air is way, way too obvious to qualify for that. "Traitorous sleazebag," maybe. "Willfully blind co-conspirator" if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
It's weird how only the Republicans are duped.
Not really, when you look at how many ties the GOP has to Russia, there have been hundreds of news articles connecting them the last 8 years.
They even visited Russia on 4th July 2018 https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/395719-gop-senators-visited-moscow-on-july-4/
The fallacy here is Tu quoque (appeal to hypocrisy).
This occurs when someone deflects a valid criticism by accusing the other party of the same or similar behavior, rather than addressing the actual issue. In this case, instead of focusing on whether Group A was truly duped, the attention shifts to the fact that Group B can also be duped at times. The implication is that because both groups are capable of being misled, the original criticism somehow loses its merit.
Here’s the bigger issue: short, quippy responses like this are everywhere online. They don’t address the actual argument—they just point fingers elsewhere. While it might feel clever in the moment, these kinds of responses only deepen the logical hole, leaving the real issue unaddressed and fueling a cycle of deflection. Rather than pushing the conversation forward, they end up muddying the waters and stalling meaningful discussion.
Ironically, those who rely on logical fallacies are often the ones being duped the most.
God i hate popular media - always trying to change the narrative with these misleading headlines.
Being a paid russian asset isn’t being duped. I hope those things rot in prison.
Duped. Yes, of course. That's it. 😏
The idea that doing something with someone who turns out to be a foreign asset makes you a conspirator is a bit ridiculous. I don't see anyone in this community accusing Kathy Hochul of being a Chinese asset since she's a Democrat, but accusing her of that would be ridiculous too. She probably didn't know that her aide was a Chinese agent.
I mean, Kathy Hochul was clearly not unwitting in her money laundering... so if your comparison is to say these right-wing influencers were completely aware of their Russian ties and were not duped at all, I am down with that.
Duped! Completely fooled! Hoodwinked! Who could have seen that coming??
thanks for the money...
Bamboozled! Foisted! Smeckledorfed!
Swindled! Fooled! Cumbubblefucked!
The coordinated messaging all emphasizing how this was accidental and these longtime trolls didn't know (or bother to ask) where the money coming from is... something.
Isn't that just trickling down from the DOJ though? The article says:
The U.S. Justice Department doesn’t allege any wrongdoing by the influencers, some of whom it says were given false information about the source of the company’s funding. Instead, it accuses two employees of RT, a Russian state media company, of funneling nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based content creation company for Russia-friendly content.
Third straight election, you say? I wonder if there is any other factor shared by the last three elections? Like maybe one of the candidates has been the same person?
Being bought is different than being duped.
I don't think most of them were duped. It's been exceptionally obvious for years. I mean I guess some of them are dumb enough not to realize, but most are just taking advantage of the money and power.
Yeah, that's like saying Old spice sponsors and influencer to sell Old spice then saying that they were duped to work for Proctor and Gamble.
“Duped” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence.
"I'm shocked, shocked to find that Russia was funding me to spout these talking points!"
"Your gratuities, sir"
"Oh, thank you very much."
Aw crap they tricked us with money again
Duped? Complicit
i'm always getting duped to say obvious pro russian talking points after taking a bunch of money and signing a contract to say obvious pro russian talking points. hate when it happens, honestly.
the people producing the content that I've seen talk about it so far have said there was no editorial line at all, and they individually all had full control of what they produced. the company's only creative contributions were when it made thumbnails and posted clips
Is this some of the obvious pro-russia propaganda?
Pool, a journalist-turned-YouTuber who first gained public attention for livestreaming the Occupy Wall Street protests, hosted Trump on his podcast earlier this year.
Johnson is an outspoken Trump supporter and internet personality who was fired from BuzzFeed after the company found evidence he’d plagiarized other works.
So these two were formally "journalists", and should know at least something about confirming sources and information before publishing, or in this case I guess making a video/podcast, about the topic given them by this company that wanted to just give them hundreds of thousands of dollars. And maybe look into why a company would pay you that kind of money out of nowhere if they were supplying all the talking points, and they just want you to say them into a camera? Maybe?
I think anyone with any background in media should see right through something like this, and has no leg to stand on when crying "we had no idea!". They saw a check and all morals/questions went out the window.
If what you say is true, they are guilty of crimes and should be prosecuted. I think the DOJ is unlikely to do this. What legitimate reason would the DOJ have to not prosecute these people?
No. My god, no. What sort of nonsense is that?
You’re taking the position of a catastrophic extreme in response to someone saying they should have been more circumspect about where their money came from.
They should have been more circumspect, though. There’s leagues between acknowledging that and saying that they should be prosecuted by the DOJ.
So their excuse is: “we are too dumb to go to prison”
Guilty by reason of Gullible? I’m going to use this, should they ever find myself in court.
No, it's worse than that. That's the DOJ's excuse for refusing to indict the traitorous influencers themselves and only going after their Russian handlers.
There needs to be a law against what they did before they could be indicted for anything. Afaik there is no law against being a foreign propagandist.
Even the two handlers themselves would have been fully legal if they had simply registered as foreign agents.
Our first amendment protects these things, for better or for worse. It protects the right to lobby the government (petition for redress in the official language), with no bar to people doing it on behalf of foreign governments, which is why all we do is make them register under FARA for transparency. We've lived under this legal system through the whole Cold War.
Speech is similarly protected, even if it is at the behest of foreign governments.
Our first amendment protects lies and propaganda just the same as everything else, which is why any of us can still go look at RT right now if we wanted. If we can't even ban RT with all the sanctions we have on Russia right now, how the hell are we supposed to go after these American citizens?
They weren't duped. They gleefully and knowingly pushed anti-American propaganda in support of the Project 2025 Handmaid's Tale christofascist theocratic dictatorship. They knew where the money was coming from but didn't care.
I think in the indictment Lauren Chen and her husband referred to the company/investors as "the Russians" so those two at least were 100% not duped, they are just traitors.
Lauren has been fired from a news org she write for.
Idk if those two and the other useful idiots broke any laws though, the indictment is just for foreign agent registration stuff.
They told the personalities they were Russian? That's news to me.
But yes, it looks like you're right, i wouldn't call them a news organization per se since they focus more on punditry but The Blaze did fire her (https://barrettmedia.com/2024/09/05/theblaze-terminates-contract-of-lauren-chen-after-doj-reveals-she-worked-for-russian-propaganda-operation/)
Idk if those two and the other useful idiots broke any laws though
I feel like it makes sense to charge anyone who was in on or knew about the scheme, and I'm pretty sure Lauren Chen counts as one of those figures.
I was kinda confused about who exactly Lauren Chen is in all this. I think you would classify her as a personality generally, but in the indictment she is referred to as founder 1 and her husband founder 2, they started tenet(?) and took money and messaging from the Russians. Lauren also hired producers to work at tenet and it looks like some of them were at least aware that they were peddling propaganda.
Non of the 6 personalities that were advertised on the tenet ticket were explicitly aware of who was paying tenet. They were just willfully ingorant and trying to grift.
I've heard some people speculate that Lauren Chen could already be arrested under a sealed indictment.
"Duped"
DUH.
Tim Fool
"Duped". Is a bit of a stretch
They knew
Johnson is an outspoken Trump supporter and internet personality who was fired from BuzzFeed after the company found evidence he’d plagiarized other works.
This is interesting. I never liked the guy. Could never put my finger on exactly why, but he always seemed fishy to me.
People found over 40 plagiarized articles.
Once the pop culture listicles grift gave up, seems like he fired up the conservative pro Russian one.
Society "How could you, [insert conservative influencer]? I'd never lend my name to Russian talking points."
Conservative influencer "Oh! They drove a dump truck full of money up to my house. I'm not made of stone!"
"Duped" doing more lifting than a pallet jack here.
MR covering it live here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_HWnfMozwo
Edit: Tim Pool's Dad called in, and is live on that link discussing it now.
What a surprise! Not.
Because conservatives are fundamentally uncurious weirdos who prove the worthlessness of an unexamined life for the rest of us.
The communists here are doing it for free.
Interesting how all these paid actors are right wingers, to believe Lemmy Russian bot hawks, the bot accounts are all fake leftists and tankies
Ah, good old "two different things can't both be true!" deflection.
Why would they limit themselves to serve propaganda only to left wingers when they can also serve propaganda to right wingers. And centrists, and fascists and tankies and anarchists. I'm pretty sure they're trying with the full political spectrum.
Total media blitz today on this . Every outlet pushing the same shite.
....good? About time these morons get called out publicly
It should have happened like 8 years ago when people realized the Kremlin was actively involved in US presidential elections.
