One of the first successful Russian-backed misinformation efforts of the 2020 election tricked ...

[sl8]

https://www.businessinsider.com/top-conservatives-helped-amplify-russian-misinformation-report-2020-8

One of the first successful Russian-backed misinformation efforts of the 2020 election tricked Donald Trump Jr. and Ted Cruz into helping spread false claims about Portland protesters

Tyler Sonnemaker
13 hours ago

• Prominent conservatives including Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Ted Cruz retweeted misleading claims and footage attempting to depict Portland protesters as having burned a "stack of Bibles."

• But the narrative was originally set in motion by Russian-backed media outlet Ruptly, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

• After Ruptly aired misleadingly edited footage of the protesters, a right-wing commentator tweeted the footage along with claims further mischaracterizing them, which several conservative politicians and news outlets then amplified.

• The incident reveals Russia's evolving and increasingly nuanced misinformation tactics, which now rely on real people spreading stories with elements of truth, not just fake news.

[...]

[Sherman A1]

1. What!

Those two spreading false information????? Say it ain't so.........

[Act_of_Reparation]

2. "Tricked"

We need to stop acting like Ted Cruz isn't completely aware of what he's doing.

The man graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law. He's not stupid. He's evil.

[tanyev]

4. +1. They're not tricked, they're complicit.

[ResistantAmerican17]

3. LMAO. Tricking these two idiots is as tough as "tricking" a kitten with a laser pointer.

[Act_of_Reparation]

6. Ted Cruz isn't an idiot.

He knows exactly what he's doing.

Thinking that guys like him are just blundering incompetents is in part why we have been unable to counter them. We keep waiting for the big dumb moment when they do something so incredibly stupid their abject incompetence becomes impossible to deny, but that moment never comes. And it is never going to come. Because he's a fascist, and his supporters are fascists, and unlike any other political philosophy fascism does not depend on the truth to assert the rightness of its claims.

It isn't that they don't understand the truth. It's that they don't care what's true.

[ResistantAmerican17]

7. Idiot: an utterly foolish or senseless person:

His tone deaf tweets, his lack of logic, his hypocrisy, and his blissful commitment to his ridiculous, time-worn misguided bullshit makes him an idiot. He’s not stupid, I didn’t say that.

[dalton99a]

5. It was a joint collaboration

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

8. Well they're both pretty stupid

[July]

9. Trump team falls for Russian propaganda.

Pass it on.