Donald Trump praised Russia during the campaign while Russian state television was running naked photos of wife Melania. (Photo: Getty)
The television coverage was unavailable in the United States. It was played solely to a Russian audience to discredit American “democracy.”
Many of Trump’s campaign pronouncements dovetailed neatly with the propaganda campaign. The candidate was widely quoted and ridiculed at the same time.
Naked photos of Milania from her early modeling days were featured in a segment titled: “Too Many Pussies.”
The photos flashed on the screen to a soundtrack of a wailing, blues-inflected slide guitar, according to The Washington Post.
Monica Lewinsky and former President Bill Clinton were also featured in the segment. Trump’s lewd and vulgar comments about women from his 2005 Billy Bush conversation were played in a voice-over.
The message was clear: U.S. politics are scandal-ridden and corrupt.
“This has been the dirtiest campaign in the history of the United States,” said Dmitry Kiselyov, a host of a talk show on the state-run Rossiya-24 channel, which is controlled by Putin.
Kiselyov said the election was clearly fixed. His evidence? Trump himself. “It seems absurd, but Trump knows what he’s talking about,” he chided.
What makes the Russian propaganda campaign so ironic is the way Trump did nothing but laud the Russians and it’s strongman leader, even after intelligence agencies confirmed that Russia was behind the Wikileaks hack of Clinton Campaign and Democratic National Committee emails.
Putin even warned of the growing threat of nuclear war without Trump as president and staged air raid drills in Moscow. But for its home audience, both Trump and Clinton were portrayed as puppets of the “military industrial complex oligarchs.”
“Whichever candidate becomes president will not be the president of the entire country,” Kiselyov said.
In case the message wasn’t clear to average Russians, Kiselyov laid it out for them.
“Everything was so disgustingly putrid that when I hear that America is somehow still considered a democracy it makes me squeamish,” he said.
That’s not all the Russians were crowing about over the U.S. election.
A senior Russian diplomat confirmed that key members of Trump’s campaign were in touch with Russian officials during the election.
“Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. “… I cannot say that all of them but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives.”
The contacts “were on a sufficient, responsible level,” Ryabkov said in an interview with the state-run Interfax news agency.
Trump made no secret of his fondness for Putin during the campaign. But he consistently denied Russia was involved, even though two of his top aides, Michael Flynn and Carter Page have extensive ties to the Russia.
Trump is also business partners through his company, The Trump Organization with Russian billionaires and may be hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to Russian and other foreign financiers.
Still, no word yet whether Congress or the FBI will be investigating the extent of his ties to the U.S. adversary.