I previously wrote about the young man I met on the Sloop John B. Amtrak ride from Hell who told me he read on the “internet” that President Biden had been diagnosed with dementia. This young man wasn’t stupid or uneducated and I believe he truly did read what he claimed on the internet. The problem is, the claim isn’t true.

I think it’s educational to talk to people like this. Was he a Trumper? Yes. Did he hate Biden? Yes. Did he believe something false on the basis of his wanting to believe it? Absolutely. He didn’t bother to fact-check or research the claim. He couldn’t even tell me the source of the claim, but by God, he knew it to be true. And that, boys and girls, is how the Russia disinformation campaign in 2016 worked and helped put Donald Trump into the White House.

Donald Trump and his supporters use the term “Russia hoax” to wave off the fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. They use the fact that Special Counsel Robert Mueller determined there was insufficient evidence to charge Trump and associates for colluding with Russia, but collude they did. The Mueller Report states there were numerous instances of contact between Russians and officials from the Trump Campaign. For God’s sake, the Trump Campaign invited Russians into their headquarters at Trump Tower on 5th Avenue to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton. The Russians didn’t start hacking into the Clinton Campaign and Democratic National Committee until the day that Donald Trump publicly asked them to. These are not conspiracy theories. They’re facts.

According to our intelligence community, the entire interference campaign titled Project Lahkta was ordered directly by Vladimir Putin. It was conducted by the Internet Research Agency which created what it called a “troll farm,” where individuals were recruited and employed to “troll” the internet. Each troll had a daily quota of comments on news sites and social media platforms, tweets, and blogs. Some trolls managed no less than ten fake Twitter accounts each and was ordered to post from each daily. The entire operation was managed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, the mercenary force that started a march to Moscow before it turned around and Prigozhin headed to Belarus for exile. How safe does Prigozhin feel in Belarus, a nation led by dictator and Putin buddy Alexander Lukashenko, when Russia’s been able to assassinate people in London?

The main purpose of the interference campaign was to create chaos and division and to destabilize the United States, but the secondary purpose was to put Donald Trump into the White House (which accomplishes the first objective for sure). Even the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee came to the conclusion in 2018 that the Russian operation favored Trump in the 2016 election.

The Russia disinformation campaign created fake stories in 2016 like Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton having financial links to ISIS and her state department armed the terrorist organization, Donald Trump sending his private jet to pick up stranded marines in Operation Desert Storm, Pizzagate, an FBI agent investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails found dead in his apartment, the Clinton Foundation paid James Comey millions, ISIS leader calls for U.S. Muslims to support Clinton, etc, etc. Many of these stories were read more than actual news stories.

The story about the dead FBI agent was supposedly from the Denver Guardian, a publication that doesn’t exist, but that’s the kind of detail people don’t research when they want to believe some bullshit. The Guardian was a website with only one story, the dead FBI agent fake story. And yet, the article was shared on Facebook over half a million times with nearly 16 million impressions. Facebook is where 44 percent of Americans get their news which is a statement that we are screwed as a country and explains why the Russians were so successful in 2016. We’re a bunch of dumb animals and they know it.

Now, Russians are blaming the United States for instigating the so-called “civil war” attempt, as Putin has described it. You can expect Republicans and assorted Qanon fucknuts to start spreading this lie. Has Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted about it yet? And if they both have, has Marjorie claimed that Bobo copied her tweet?

The truth is, there isn’t a reason for the United States to further destabilize a nuclear power. Why would the United States want to trade Putin for Prigozhin, who we currently have sanctions on? It doesn’t make sense and would be a move that could literally blow up in our faces.

To my liberal friends and readers, you can be just as bad as MAGAts about believing what you want to believe. I’ve seen it and the worst thing is, we don’t have to make up crap about Republicans and Trumpers. They suck enough in reality.

Do yourself and your nation a favor when you see a post on the internet that sounds too good/horrible to be true. Google it. Fake news on social media posts are incredibly easy to debunk. So don’t buy into them. Be better than Republicans.

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Visit Clay Jones’ website and email him at [email protected].