Jasmine: Portrait of a Russian Troll

This Russian troll claimed to be a longtime Democrat who is voting for Donald Trump

(Meme I found on Twitter/X.)

If you’re relatively new to the issues related to Kremlin propaganda and how it’s affecting other countries (including the United States), I recommend reading some background posts I wrote that explains things in more detail along with links to other sites where you can read more to educate yourself.

As I previously wrote in this introductory post on propaganda, Russian troll farms will release bots on social media as a way of influencing public opinion. Sometimes these bots are little more than tiny automated programs that spew pre-programmed messages in English, Spanish, French, and other languages. They are not even human at all. They will frequently have a first name followed by a random string of numbers (like “Jenny8675309”).

There are other times when these troll accounts are directly staffed by real people. They pretend to be American, British, Canadian, German, etc. They have names and social media handles that make them seem human and these accounts will actually reply to responses.

In 2016 Samantha Bee traveled to Moscow where she interviewed two employees of an internet troll farm who were paid to impersonate Americans urging other Americans to vote for Donald Trump.

These accounts with direct human touches are even more deceiving and harder to spot than the automated bots with the first name and string of numbers. A recent example of this type of a fake American who's really being impersonated by a Russian is a Twitter/X user named Jasmine whose handle is JazzyLynnRose. She gained a lot of notice when she posted “As a former proud Democrat, I learned today that I will be voting for Donald J Trump. Joe Biden lost my vote today.”

Internet sleuths decided to look at her timeline and discovered that she did not just “learned today” that she will be voting for Trump. She has a previous history of making pro-Trump statements.

On top of all that, it seems like her initial statement that she's a former proud Democrat who will vote for Trump is not original or unique. In fact these Internet sleuths have discovered that her tweet is word-for-word identical or nearly identical to three other tweets posted by three other Twitter/X accounts all within 24 hours.

But then it gets even better. Her account shows that she has only been on Twitter/X since October, 2023. So she has been online for less than six months as of this writing. In her account bio she mentions that she is the co-host of a radio show called “Let's Talk About It” on ESPN Sirius XM Radio.

Some of these sleuths did their research and found that ESPN doesn't have an employee named Jasmine who hosts a radio show on ESPN Sirius XM Radio. When she was confronted about this, she editied her account bio to remove the ESPN reference but it still says that she is a co-host of the “Let's Talk About It” show on Sirius XM Radio.

Then these Internet sleuths took a look at her profile picture, which shows a smiling woman wearing sunglasses and holding a cup of coffee while standing on a beach on a nice sunny day. It's basically a pleasant innocuous photo. Someone has found that this same exact photo was used in an online store to sell 100% Arabica Coffee made by the Hawaiian Paradise Coffee Store.

The metadata from Jasmine's profile picture originated from Russia. Note the pictures below with the “ru” URL addresses circled in pink.

Jasmine's profile picture originally came from one of those online stock photo companies. For a certain price, you too can become Jasmine.

Now that Jasmine has been exposed as a Russian troll, everytime she makes a new post on Twitter/X people respond with posting screenshot evidence proving that she's not even an American.

It goes to show that if you encounter any online messages from anyone claiming to be a longtime Democrat or a former Democrat who have become so disillusioned with Joe Biden and the Democrats that he/she is planning to vote for Trump, you should view these messages with suspicion. Chances are that this person is actually a Russian troll who is paid to impersonate an American online in the hopes that real Americans will see that message and feel inspired to vote for Donald Trump.

Never forget that the Russians are doing everything possible to ensure a Trump victory in November.

My blog is free to subscribe but if you want to make a comment, you’ll need to take out a paid subscription. Click on the button below for more details.