How Putin Is Singing Along With the Trump White House
Whether or not Donald Trump’s campaign colluded in any way with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 presidential election remains an open question. Yet, the Trump White House and the Kremlin do at times seem to share an approach to spreading misinformation and undermining confidence in news reports.
From Trump’s many denouncements of “fake news” to his defiant claims that the multiple ongoing Russia investigations are “a hoax” and a waste of taxpayer money, “a lot of the language is about creating doubt and question marks,” says Erik Nisbet, an associate professor of communications at The Ohio State University who studies electoral and Russian disinformation. Nisbet describes the strategy as an “authoritarian, post-truth approach” whose overarching goal “is to diminish the ability of the media to be the Fourth Estate and hold Trump accountable.”
Putin has actively delegitimized the Russian media for years. In the U.S., Nisbet’s research after the election found, “Those who buy into the concept that the mainstream media are out to get Trump are more likely to buy into fake news.”
As Trump and his associates have run with false stories stemming from Russian media outlets, Putin’s government appears to have taken pains to echo messaging coming from the White House—perhaps in an attempt to play to the upheaval over the Russia scandal and sow further doubts and division among the American public. Here are some prime examples:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/how-putin-is-singing-along-with-the-trump-white-house/
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