Mod: Apparently Agent Donald is once again peddling Russian propaganda. Meet Kristian Brunovich Rouz, the 'reporter' who claimed a 75 year old man is actually a feared Antifa street fighter.
Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist(
Daily Beastlink): If the stories broadcast by the
Trump-endorsed
One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a
Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a
Russian national on the payroll of the
Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet,
Sputnik.
Kristian Brunovich Rouz, originally from the
Siberian city of
Novosibirsk, has been living in
San Diego, where
OAN is based, since August 2017, reporting on
U.S. politics for the 24-hour news channel. For all of that time, he’s been simultaneously writing for
Sputnik, a
Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in
Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the
U.S. intelligence community.
Rouz’s on-air reports for
OAN include a wholly fabricated 2017 segment claiming
Hillary Clinton had been secretly bankrolling
Antifa through her political action committee.
Clinton,
Rouz claimed falsely, gave
Antifa protesters
$800,000 that “went toward things like bricks, hammers, bats, and chains.”
Other smears target billionaire financier
George Soros, a longtime
Kremlin bête noire. In one segment,
Rouz amplified a thoroughly debunked claim that
Soros collaborated with the
Nazis during
World War II, when the
Jewish philanthropist was 14 years old. Another
Rouz story accused
Soros of secretly funding migrant caravans.
Kremlin propaganda sometimes sneaks into
Rouz’s segments on unrelated matters, dropped in as offhand background information. A segment on the
Syrian rescue workers known as the
White Helmets references “allegations of the
White Helmets’ involvement in military activities, executions, and numerous war atrocities,” but doesn’t disclose that those “allegations” were hoaxes that originated with
Vladimir Putin and his proxies.
In another report,
Rouz cast
Clinton’s criticism of
Brexit as an extension of her “grievous insults and fake narratives against
Russia”—an assertion that makes sense only in the context of
Rouz’s multiple reports claiming
Russia was framed for hacking
Democrats.
In all of
Rouz’s
OAN segments reviewed by
The Daily Beast, he is introduced as a “
One Americacorrespondent,” with no disclosure of his work for
Russia’s state-owned media, where he continues to file stories daily, primarily on economic news.
“This completes the merger between
Russian state-sponsored propaganda and
American conservative media,” said former
FBI agent
Clint Watts, a research fellow at the
Foreign Policy Research Institute. “We used to think of it as ‘They just have the same views’ or ‘They use the same story leads.’ But now they have the same personnel.”
When Fox News disappoints, Trump has a backup: the conspiracy theory-peddling OANN(
Washington Postlink):
Fox News and
President Trump have been together for a long time, but like a lot of seemingly happy couples, they’re not immune to relationship turmoil. The discontent has been brewing for a while, at least on
Trump’s part. And he has made it clear he was ready to pick up the propaganda equivalent of
Tinder and start scrolling for a new love.
This week,
Trump signaled just how intrigued he is by
OANN. He used his
Twitter and
Facebook accounts to magnify an evidence-free conspiracy theory floated in the outlet’s “news report” — a generous term under the circumstances.
The theory: That 75-year-old protester
Martin Gugino, who was put in the hospital after being shoved to the ground by two
Buffalo police officers last week, had been trying to “scan” and “blackout” their police equipment. (The officers have been charged with felony assault.)
Trump credited his new crush: “
Buffalo protester shoved by
Police could be an
ANTIFA provocateur. 75-year-old
Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications to blackout the equipment.
@OANN I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?” the president tweeted.
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