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N0body ,

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.

gedaliyah ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

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?

zante ,

Total media blitz today on this . Every outlet pushing the same shite.

glimse ,

…good? About time these morons get called out publicly

TropicalDingdong , (edited )

“Duped” doing more lifting than a pallet jack here.

MR covering it live here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_HWnfMozwo

Edit: Tim Pool’s Dad called in, and is live on that link discussing it now.

ReducedArc ,

ack

TimLovesTech ,
@TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social avatar

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.

realcaseyrollins OP ,

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?

scarabine ,

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.

realcaseyrollins OP ,

I see, that’s a fair take 👍🏾

idiomaddict ,

How is that extreme?

Prosecution isn’t execution, it is trying them for a crime that they may have committed. If they’re found guilty, even punishment could include things like seizing the money paid to them for those videos and putting watermark warnings on those videos explaining who funded them or taking them down entirely, not exclusively jail time.

realcaseyrollins OP ,

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.

DogPeePoo ,

Tim Fool

ravhall ,

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.

grue ,

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.

Carrolade ,

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?

ravhall ,

I’m sure the DOJ could make a crime stick if they really wanted to. But, do they really want to?

psvrh ,
@psvrh@lemmy.ca avatar

“Duped” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence.

Rentlar ,

“I’m shocked, shocked to find that Russia was funding me to spout these talking points!”

“Your gratuities, sir”

“Oh, thank you very much.”

MushuChupacabra ,
@MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world avatar

“Duped”

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

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.

realcaseyrollins OP ,

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.

cygnus ,
@cygnus@lemmy.ca avatar

True, but these people have been completely aligned with Kremlin talking points for years, and I wish the article and others would take the time to point that out. I’m sure it can be phrased in an ambiguous enough way that the reader can draw conclusions without it being libelous.

realcaseyrollins OP ,

The AP is a straight news organization, I’m sure there are plenty of left wing articles about the situation that mention that though.

Burn_The_Right ,

Doesn’t MBFC already rate AP as “left”? Any factual reporting outlet is going to be called “left” because facts are seen as “left” in today’s Overton window.

I think it’s dishonest to pretend these Russian operatives had any plausible deniability. There is absolutely nothing plausible about their denial. Just because they weren’t charged with knowingly accepting Russian money doesn’t mean it wasn’t extremely obvious that they knew where the money was coming from.

Diplomjodler3 ,

Nazis are always treated with kid gloves by the US “justice” system. Same as it ever was.

realcaseyrollins OP ,

Like Trump?

Diplomjodler3 ,

And many others.

grue ,

Okay, then the DOJ grasping at any flimsy excuse to avoid indicting the traitorous right-wing influencers themselves is… something.

That better?

realcaseyrollins OP ,

Yes 👍🏾

Eldritch ,

How does one dupe the willing?

snooggums ,
@snooggums@midwest.social avatar

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.

LEDZeppelin , (edited )

Duped? How? By getting paid?

Atsur ,

Oopsie I was just so confused by this giant bag of cash!

realcaseyrollins OP ,

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.

RicoBerto ,

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.

randompasta ,

Duped! Completely fooled! Hoodwinked! Who could have seen that coming??

Pistcow ,

thanks for the money…

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