If you were going to attack Hillary Clinton to favor Trump why wouldn’t you piggyback 25 years of well-established talk radio lies about her?
And why wouldn’t you figure out how to feed a team of 1200 coordinated radio stations already used very successfully to undermine democracy?
Today, one of today’s Senate Intel Committee witnesses, Clinton Watts, testified that Trump amplified ‘Russian active measures’ and repeated them. Trump campaign would amplify fake news from Russian sources and the Russians would amplify lies and idiocies coming from Trump. He was coordinating with Russian propaganda operations.
As an example Watts referenced Trump’s repeated lie that the election was rigged. During the campaign Trump repeated the claim that the election would be rigged with millions of illegal voters.
While media had no clue where that came from his base would recognize it. It goes back nearly a year at least on Republican talk radio. In early summer of 2016 I heard a local talk radio host in Wisconsin (I’m pretty sure it was 1310 WIBA) read from an article that claimed the Obama administration was supplying millions of illegal aliens with driver’s licenses so they could vote. This was an amping up of many years of smaller scale Republican talk radio voter and election fraud lies used to help Republican state politicians sell voter ID and other voter suppression.
How much Russian trolling played on well-established Republican radio memes RW think tanks developed, and how long have the Russians been feeding talk radio?
To feed talk radio all they have to do is feed one or more of the major talk radio gods. Limbaugh lies for 15 hrs every week on 600 radio stations and if it’s a big lie then a few hundred other national and local talk radio hosts will repeat it over 1200 or more stations as long as it takes to make it real. Perfect.
From New York Magazine, Operation Trump, by Gabriel Sherman April 3, 2016:
Throughout 2014, the three (Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, and Sam Nunberg) fed Trump strategy memos and political intelligence. “I listened to thousands of hours of talk radio, and he was getting reports from me,” Nunberg recalled. What those reports said was that the GOP base was frothing over a handful of issues including immigration, Obamacare, and Common Core.
Who convinced Trump to pay for that? Did he pay for that? Republicans swim in talk radio and take it for granted. Democrats don’t even factor it into their political and media strategies, they are content to react after the lies are created.
Who figured out that if big city Trump could speak red state talk radio and if Rush Limbaugh spent his hours making excuses for Trump and attacking the GOP establishment candidates like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, he could beat the big money?
If Russian internet action in the US goes back to 2008 (wasn’t that about when Breitbart was founded?), as one of the witnesses claimed, maybe that includes the Russian hack of emails from East Anglia University climate scientists in 2009. Within days of that hack being leaked Limbaugh had created ‘Climategate’ and it was used to derail President Obama’’s attempts at the Copenhagen climate conference. Even though ‘Climategate’ was debunked almost immediately it was referenced a couple of days ago on CNN by Senator Inhofe (R-flat Earth), who claimed it was proof that global warming was a hoax.
Before social media there was talk radio. It’s half-assed to examine coordination between the Trump and the Russians without including it.
The talk radio gods are still defending Trump. Maybe the Democrats should ask the experts on Russian PSYOPS at one of these hearings about Russian use of talk radio. They should at least be looking for those associations. Fixing the Russian/Putin problem is just part of the problem.
Whether it’s Putin or the Koch brothers coordinating those 1200 radio stations, If we want a real democracy again the talk radio problem also has to be fixed.
How long's Putin been using talk radio? Trump 2014, debt default in 2011, 'Climategate' '09?
Americans cannot ignore Limbaugh on climate.
How to fix talk radio:
43% of Limbaugh’s 600 stations depend on the 88 major universities in 40 states.