DISINFO: Discredited conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in US elections are back
SUMMARY
Conspiracy theories against Russia are back. US TV station MSNBC is doing its best yet to spread the theory that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. “Do you think that the president is afraid to make Putin mad because maybe Putin did help him win the election and he doesn’t want to make him mad for 2020?”, anchorman Chuck Todd asked former National Security Advisor John Bolton in an interview in the show Meet the Press. This caused commotion in social media, since the Democrats’ affirmation that Trump colluded with Russia to somehow ‘steal’ the presidency seemed to have been put to rest after an attempt to impeach the president that came to nowhere. Bolton avoided Todd’s bait and said that there was “no evidence” that the president colluded with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Todd tried to put some distance and clarified several times that he wasn’t talking about “collusion”, without explaining what he was talking about if it wasn’t of “collusion”.
RESPONSE
Recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about Russia’s innocence of meddling in US elections. The article deliberately merges the accusations of collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin with those of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. While the investigation of US special counsel Robert Mueller found no conclusive evidence of collusion -of which president Trump immediately claimed to have been exonerated-, there is massive proof of Russian meddling in the elections through social media, hackings and interested leaks, as the US intelligence community unanimously concluded. The mentioned impeachment process against Donald Trump was not related to any of this. Trump was impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of justice, and the procedure was motivated by the US president's alleged attempt to use his leverage on Ukraine's president against his political rival Joe Biden. See other examples of this disinformation narratives in our database, such as claims about the supposed anti-Russian bias of international institutions - be it the OPCW, the World Anti-Doping Agency or the United Nations - which always falsely accuse Russia; the alleged Russophobia of the EU; the affirmation that it is NATO and not the Kremlin who is involved in the Donbas conflict; or denials that Russia had any role in the poisoning of Sergey Skripal or the downing of MH17, that it interfered in other countries’ elections or that it waged a disinformation campaign on COVID-19.