Just when you thought it was safe to return to the polling booths, the threat of Russian election interference is back – or so we are being told. How much of an actual threat it poses – if any – is open to question. Even the Department of Justice acknowledges there is little evidence that Russia’s information warfare changed a single vote in 2016. Still, the murmurs are out there. What’s the agenda behind these latest Chicken Little cries, then? And how does Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest endorsement play into this resuscitated corpse of an election scare?
To be clear, no one should doubt that foreign election interference is a real thing. Russians and other overseas adversaries have often tried to interject propaganda and other political activity into US elections. No American should be laboring under the illusion that the US government doesn’t also attempt to influence elections in certain other countries.
Things changed in 2016 when Hillary Clinton’s campaign engaged in a fake conspiracy involving her then-presidential rival, Donald Trump, and Moscow. Leading Democrats realized they suddenly had a powerful new narrative to roll out at election time: Their political opponents and critics at home are all in league with Russia.
Reviving the Russian Election Interference Narrative
On September 4, the FBI made a bold move – one that is bound to have sent a chill down Putin’s spine. “‘Knock it off.’ – Says FBI Director Christopher Wray to foreign adversaries meddling in American democracy,” the agency posted on X. That should do it.
Of late, there has been a flurry of legal moves taken by US federal agencies against various Russian entities. On September 4, the DOJ revealed that it had seized 32 domains allegedly tied to Russian attempts to influence voters, both in the US and in other countries. “The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to send around its own propaganda,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Kamala Harris (Photo by John Tully/Getty Images)
Throwing a curveball at the now-eight-year-old claim that Trump is somehow Putin’s puppet, the Russian dictator on September 5th endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race. “Our ‘favorite,’ if you can call it that, was the current president, Mr. [Joe] Biden,” Putin said while attending the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. “But [Biden] was removed from the race, and he recommended all his supporters to support Ms. Harris. Well, we will do so. We will support her.”
Putin was critical of Trump for placing “so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia like no other president has ever introduced before him.”
Still, in reporting this, CNN chose to spin it as though Putin were really backing Trump. Using references to a popular American political TV drama, reporters for the left-wing news network wrote, “So if Putin’s take on US election politics is seen through the lens of ‘House of Cards,’ then, Putin’s support of Harris is a sort of Frank Underwood move: A kind of endorsement poisonous to its recipient.”
Whose Side Is Moscow Really On?
When it comes to the Russian government, there can be little doubt about the real motivation behind any of its propaganda operations targeting the US or any other Western country. Moscow aims always to destabilize the West and to sow division and confusion among voters for its own ends. Putin’s endorsement of Harris may indeed be disingenuous and purely self-serving. Still, had he claimed to want Trump back in the White House, it’s a virtual certainty that CNN and every other left-leaning news outlet would have taken the endorsement at face value. Additionally, if Trump won the election, they would have held it up as proof that he had done so with Russian help.
Before the Democrat incumbent Joe Biden was forced to drop out of the 2024 race, Putin admitted that he would prefer a Biden victory. During a February 14 interview, The Russian leader said he felt Biden was “better” for Russia because “he is a more experienced, predictable person, a politician of the old school.”
Rebekah Koffler, a former DIA intelligence officer, is the author of Putin’s Playbook. She recently told Fox News Digital:
“When it comes to preference, Putin and his regime prefer Kamala to deal with as a future U.S. president. Putin believes that he can manipulate Harris easily, unlike Trump, whom the Russians profiled as unpredictable and difficult to read.”
The bottom line is that Russia is not on anyone’s side in the American political landscape. Russia is only on Russia’s side. That being the case, Putin will favor someone in the White House with whom he can more easily deal to get what he wants.
It does indeed seem far more logical that the Russian leader would prefer Kamala Harris to Donald Trump. Despite years of false narratives put out by Democrats and their media allies, Trump’s previous four years in the White House were far more detrimental than beneficial to Moscow’s geopolitical agenda. Just one example is Russian military aggression against Ukraine, which was conducted while Barack Obama was in the White House but ceased almost entirely during the Trump years. Then, as we all know, once Biden became president, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
In reality – and everyone on both sides of the political divide knows this – Russian information operations are not going to change, or even have a significant impact on the outcome of the 2024 election. No doubt, though, the Biden administration, the Harris campaign, and the left-wing media want the specter of Russian election interference in their back pockets. Should Harris win in November, they will all claim she was such a popular candidate that she won in spite of Moscow’s efforts. If Trump wins, they will once again scream that his victory is illegitimate because Moscow put its thumb on the scale.
