When I was four years old, I would regularly insist my father check my bedroom closet for booger-men or other perilous creatures before I went to sleep. In a very similar uninformed, paranoid reaction, the Biden administration is once more accusing Tsar Vladimir I's Russia of implanting booger-men in the United States' 2024 elections in the form of "disinformation."
These people really are becoming tiresome.
The Biden administration on Wednesday plans to accuse Russia of a sustained effort to influence the 2024 US presidential election by using Kremlin-run media and other online platforms to target US voters with disinformation, six sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
It’s expected the US will make a series of moves on Wednesday aimed at addressing the Kremlin’s efforts including the White House publicly condemning the actions and the Justice Department announcing law enforcement action targeting the covert Russian campaign, the sources said.
RT, the Russian state media network, is a major focus of the US announcement, the sources said. US officials see the Russian outlet as a key piece of Kremlin propaganda efforts.
The Russian disinformation operation is being laundered through both Americans and non-American voices, four of the sources said.
So, what precisely is the disinformation that the Russians are supposedly "laundering?"
A growing number of foreign operatives have attempted to influence US elections since Russia’s 2016 activity, which included hacking the Democratic National Committee and leaking documents aimed at undercutting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
In the 2024 election, Iran’s alleged embrace of a similar hack-and-leak playbook that Russia used in 2016 has US officials on heightened alert. In June, a group of Iranian government-linked hackers successfully targeted the Trump campaign, stole internal campaign documents and shared them with news organizations. The hackers breached the email account of longtime Trump ally Roger Stone to target campaign staff, CNN has reported.
Granted, hacking American political campaigns and party functions and releasing the hacked data is troublesome and we should be on the lookout for such attempts. But how does this constitute "disinformation?"
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The cry of "disinformation" is the booger-man of the current election discussions, especially from the left. "Disinformation," to most Democrats and the legacy media (but I repeat myself) means "anything I disagree with," and it's unclear how the release of information taken (illegally) from the various databases of American political parties and campaigns falls into this category. Has the information being released been altered? Are they adding fictional information to make the release somehow damning to one party or another?
More importantly, does the Biden/Harris administration think that the American people are so stupid that we can't see through Russian attempts to influence our vote? (I think we all know the answer to that.)
There are enough real issues surrounding this election to deal with, and there are enough real concerns about Tsar Vladimir I's Russia, that we shouldn't worry overly much about the "election interference" booger-man. This election will largely be decided on domestic matters, with the economy, inflation, and illegal immigration being key issues. So it's a bit of a head-scratcher to see the Biden/Harris administration suddenly focusing on Russia again - but there may be a reason, after all.
Could they be setting the stage to cast doubt on the 2024 election in the event Donald Trump wins? This is a drum that shows that Her Imperial Majesty Hillary I, Dowager-Empress of Chappaqua, has never stopped beating since her 2016 loss to Donald Trump. In one of the great ironies of recent American election history, she has never accepted that loss or the legitimacy of Donald Trump's first term. Democrats, specifically the Biden/Harris administration, may well be setting the stage to spend four years of a Trump/Vance administration by claiming they are only in place because of Russian interference.
As I said at the beginning, this really is tiresome.
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