The Roundup

The special "Crackdown on Kremlin Propaganda" issue

Donald Trump Finally Admitted What We've Known All Along

Most thinking people know that Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. The judges who oversaw the numerous lawsuits related to the election that were filed agreed that Trump lost. Only Trump's most hardcore MAGA supporters think otherwise.

This week Trump appeared on Lex Fridman's podcast where, at long last, he admitted that, in his own words, “he lost by a whisker.” That confession won't erase the fact that he is now facing four federal felony charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Nor does it erase the fact that Ashli Babbitt lost her life in the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 because she chose to believe Trump's claim that the election was stolen and she fought for something that was based on Trump's lie.

It also doesn't erase the fact that US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick had also died at that same US Capitol riot. Had Trump accepted the election result and conceded, Ashli Babbitt and Brian Sicknick would both still be alive today.

But Trump's confession has led white supremacist Nick Fuentes to completely disavow him. Good. Maybe Trump's confession will get other MAGA people to finally see the light and realize that they've been following a charlatan, liar, and a rapist. Maybe it'll convince them to either vote for Kamala Harris or stay home altogether on Election Day.

Codepink is Facing Legal Trouble

A few months ago I shot a few photos of Codepink co-founder Medea Benjamin at the Poor People's Campaign's Worker’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington. Codepink was originally founded over 20 years ago as a feminist antiwar movement but they have gotten increasingly controversial in recent years.

Now Codepink is one of the many individuals and organizations who are being accused in a civil lawsuit of violating the federal Anti-Terrorism Act. Codepink and the other co-defendants are accused of conspiring with and aiding and abetting Hamas, which the US has officially designated as a terrorist group as well as spreading Hamas propaganda. Here's a page from the lawsuit that mentions Codepink.

You can read the rest of the lawsuit document right here.

Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and the Nazis

Elon Musk complains about advertisers fleeing his Twitter/X platform but there's a reason for this. Tucker Carlson, who has his own show on Twitter/X recently had a guest named Darryl Cooper who said that Winston Churchill was the villain of World War II and the Nazis launched a war that they were unprepared to deal with. Elon Musk promoted that program himself.

Here's the thing, most advertisers aren't into having their ads for their products placed next to Twitter/X shows like Tucker Carlson's or posts by far-right wingers promoting racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia, pro-authoritarian leaders (such as Vladimir Putin) and/or contains graphic violent scenes. And Elon Musk seems to be too dimwitted to realize this.

More Anti-Netanyahu Protests in Israel

Last weekend there were more Anti-Netanyahu protests that filled downtown Tel Aviv.

Fake Pro-Trump Influencers on Twitter/X

The next time you see a photo of an attractive pro-MAGA woman on Twitter/X who is also writing about why you should vote for Donald Trump in November, keep in mind that it may be a post from a bot. Many photos of these attractive women have come from the accounts of European influencers who have said that their images were used without their permission. It's unknown who is behind these bogus pro-MAGA accounts but they could either come from people associated with Donald Trump or even a Kremlin troll farm.

The Kremlin Troll Farms Go After Kamala Harris

Recently a story went viral on Twitter/X claiming that Kamala Harris was involved in a hit-and-run that left a 13-year-old girl named Alicia Brown paralyzed. There's one problem: It’s not true. Apparently it's part of a Kremlin disinformation campaign who can be traced to a former Florida cop who now lives in Moscow named John Mark Dougan. The alleged Harris hit-and-run accident really happened in Guam and, of course, Harris had nothing to do with it.

It shows that the Kremlin is doing everything possible to ensure a Trump win in November.

Cracking Down on the Kremlin Propagandists

The Biden Administration isn't taking the latest Kremlin propaganda tricks against Kamala Harris lying down. The US Justice Department has seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two Russian state media employees of the Kremlin media channel RT of covertly funding a Tennessee-based content creation company as a way of pushing back against Russian attempts to spread disinformation ahead of the US election in November. It was later revealed that the Tennessee company in question is TENET Media, which puts out podcasts featuring far-right personalities like Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern.

It's also being reported that TENET Media paid Tim Pool a whopping $100,000 per week for his podcast series, where he made one episode per week. So it's $100,000 per episode per week. That's a lot of money for speaking into a microphone that's hooked up to a computer in front of a video camera. And he was getting this loot despite Pool's videos having weak viewership numbers.

Thanks to the latest indictments, anyone involved with TENET Media is now being lobbed with the Russia accusation whenever they post on Twitter/X.

The podcasters whom TENET Media hired using Kremlin money were far from the best of the best yet they were pliable enough to spew Kremlin propaganda. As this tweet puts it, “When you remember Tim Pool has an 8th grade education and Benny Johnson got fired from BuzzFeed for plagiarism it's easy to see why Putin would see them as easy marks.”

“Never Walz” Gets Hilarious

At the Minnesota State Fair a few weeks ago there was a booth staffed by a group known as Never Walz, who is against Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz. The only problem is that this group didn't register a URL before the fair so a pro-Harris/Walz person did and the result is hilarious. Typing http://www.neverwalz.com takes you to a hilarious page about Donald Trump being a convicted felon before automatically redirecting to Harris’ campaign site. Well played, whoever did this! 🤣

Truth Social Sinks Further

This week Truth Social has sank down to below $17 per share. This was a company that was worth $80 million at one point. It once again proves that everything Donald Trump touches eventually dies.

Christmas in October in Venezuela

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has decided to move Christmas from December 25 to October 1 this year. Why? Because Maduro said that it's September and it already smells like Christmas.

Just a few hours before making that proclamation on Venezuelan television, an arrest warrant was issued for opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia. It's a classic case of deflection—to get people more focused on the new Christmas holiday date than on the fact that an opposition leader is now a wanted criminal simply for political reasons.

Also it seems so unnecessary to move Christmas to October when there's a more appropriate holiday that is already celebrated that month and it has been celebrated worldwide for centuries—Halloween.

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