In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American political consultant and lobbyist, Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr). He's best-known for his work as an advisor to Donald Trump & for his alleged connections with Julian Assange and the GRU in relation to the leaked DNC e-mails.
1/20
Stone has been involved US politics for a long time, and he'd started his dirty tricks already in 1972, when he contributed money to Nixon's rival under the name of Trotskyist youth group, and tipped about this to the local news.
2/20
In 1977, he won the presidency of the Young Republicans with Paul Manafort as his campaign manager. In 1980, Stone and Manafort launched a lobbying company, BMS, together with partner Charlie Black. The company represented basically anyone with money, including Zaire's...
3/20
...dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, and Filipino dictator, Ferdinand Marcos. This led to the company being nicknamed "The Torturers' Lobby".
Stone has described himself as "an agent provocateur," stating that his strategy is to "attack, attack, attack – never defend" ...
4/20
...and "Admit nothing, deny everything, and launch a counterattack," a strategy very similar to the Russian style of "Firehose of Falsehood" information operations.
5/20
Roger officially left his position as Trump's campaign adviser in 2015, but he allegedly collaborated still in 2016 with Julian Assange to discredit Hillary Clinton. In 2020, unsealed search warrants revealed contacts between the two, and that Stone had...
6/20
...organized a "couple of hundred" fake FB accounts to spread the anti-Clinton message on social media. The Washington Times reported that Stone DM'd with the alleged DNC hacker Guccifer 2.0, a persona believed to be created by the Russian intelligence agency GRU.
7/20
Few months before the Podesta e-mails were leaked, he tweeted "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel".
On Jan 2019, Roger was arrested and charged with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and five counts of making false statements.
8/20
In one case, he told a witness to "prepare to die". In Nov 2019, he was convicted on all seven felony counts, and was sentenced to 40 months in prison. Few days before he was scheduled to report to prison, his sentence was commuted and finally pardoned by Trump.
9/20
After Trump's loss at the 2020 presidential election, Stone was actively participating in the Stop the Steal movement, claiming that Trump actually won. A Danish film crew allegedly caught Stone declaring "Fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence".
10/20
Stone was also involved in the ReAwaken America, a far-right, Christian nationalist political movement that promotes a range of conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, Stop the Steal movement, WEF, and to QAnon.
11/20
After his speech, Stone collected money for his legal and medical bills.
Other notable speakers at the tour were Michael Flynn, Alex Jones and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
12/20
In Apr 2021, The US Justice Department filed a civil law suit against Roger and his wife for alleged unpaid federal taxes, amounting to around 2 million USD. It is unclear if Stone collected money for this lawsuit at the ReAwaken America Tour.
13/20
Stone defended Putin in an interview conducted by Real America's Voice by saying that "Putin is acting defensively," continuing that "you won’t read that in the mainstream media". He referred to Zelensky as an "undemocratic" after he'd shut down Medvedchuk's media empire.
14/20
Medvedchuk is best-known for being Putin's lapdog. He also claimed that "The Ukrainians have used their soil to place dual-launch missile pads, missiles that will be aimed at the Soviet Union [sic]," and also suggested that the US and Ukraine are ...
15/20
..."cooking up who knows what pestilence to dump on the Russian people" in the Ukrainian biolabs.
In Apr 2022, he suggested that Zelensky is no "different than Putin," continuing that "Ukrainian soldiers are reliably involved in atrocities, so that makes him as big a ...
16/20
...murderer as the Russians. Nobody has the moral high ground here, that’s for sure."
Stone actively tries to undermine the support of US to Ukraine on his Rumble channel, where he interviews figures like Michael Flynn, Tara Reade, and Alex Jones.
17/20
He also seems to oppose the "globalists" and the "deep state", and promotes conspiracy theories like The Great Reset.
Funnily, Roger Stone uses social media like most baby boomers - he occasionally forgets that everyone can see his tweets.
18/20
He's called people "stupid ignorant ugly bitch", stating that he'd "enjoy crush u in court and forcing you to eat shit". He's called @yashar a "talentless asswipe" and @ananavarro "fat" and "stupid". Roger's also called Washingon Post "CIA controlled" media.
19/20
As is tradition in the US, you can buy all kinds of crap from his web store, ranging from "hand signed" paperweights to "personally hand signed Presidential pardons".
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American radio host and propagandist, Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow). He’s best known for blaming Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine on the US, and for publishing a 700-page book full of Kremlin propaganda.
1/23
Most of you probably remember Scotty from this recent episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, in which he was schooled for his revisionist propaganda by Ukrainian volunteer and activist Anastasiya Paraskevova (@UkrainianAna).
2/23
Let’s start with the obvious - Scott Horton is a hardcore Kremlin apologist who sees nothing wrong with what Putin does, but strongly condemns anything that Ukrainians do to defend themselves. For Horton,the enemy is the US and all of its allies. The way this works is that…
3/23
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss the sad (but funny) state of Finnish vatniks. After Russia launched their full-scale invasion against Ukraine, the Finnish pro-Kremlin/conspiracy theorist scene experienced a dramatic devaluation and hasn’t been able to bounce back since.
1/20
I often get asked about the current state of the Finnish vatnik club, and there’s usually not much to report.
It’s not because these people have stopped, but because today their work has only comedic value.
So here’s the latest:
2/20
Master vatnik and traitor Johan Bäckman has relocated to Russia, and he was recently given a Russian citizenship. It’s obvious that Johan was recruited by Russia’s intelligence agencies a long time ago. He’s still producing videos on YouTube on his…
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Romanian politician and conspiracy theorist, Călin Georgescu (@calin_georgescu). He’s best-known for his pro-Kremlin and conspiratorial views, running for president of Romania, and doing it by only campaigning on TikTok.
1/25
Georgescu has a doctorate in pedology (a branch of soil science), and held various positions in Romania’s environment ministry during the 90s.
Between 1999-2012, he was a representative for Romania on the national committee of the United Nations Environment Program.
2/25
He was proposed as Romania’s prime minister in 2011, 2012 and 2016 by Romanian far-right parties, but he rose to international infamy in 2024, when he ran for president of Romania independently and obtained the most votes (22,95%) out of all candidates in the first round.
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a Canadian journalist and alleged Soviet/Russian spy, David Pugliese (@davidpugliese). He’s best-known for his articles about “Ukrainian Nazis”, and for allegedly being a spy for both the Soviet Union and later Russia.
1/21
Several months ago I was anonymously sent a pile of documents from the mid-80s originating from the KGB archives in Kyiv. These documents outlined a KGB recruitment into “Stuart”, or David Pugliese who “works in foreign mass media” and who is…
2/21
..“studied with the perspective of possible operative use”. Another document described “Stuart’s” contact “Ivan”, who allegedly became his handler.Some have speculated that “Ivan” is Fred Weir, a correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor.He’s lived in Moscow since 1986.
3/21
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce an American far-right social media personality, Nicholas J. Fuentes (@NickJFuentes). He’s best-known for his white supremacist, misogynistic and antisemitic rhetoric, and for being the poster boy for the so-called incel movement.
1/17
Like so many from the white supremacist movement, Fuentes dropped out of university after his freshman year. He studied introductory international relations, which apparently made him a geopolitics expert. Nick was introduced to the white supremacist movement at an…
2/17
..early age - he took part in the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville,Virginia. In 2017, Fuentes launched his political talk show “America First”. Initially the show was aired on Trump-aligned Right Side Broadcasting Network, but it was dropped after the rally.
3/17
In today’s #vatniksoup, I’ll discuss foreign malign influence operations during the 2024 US elections. As in 2016 and 2020, these recent elections were also a target of massive disinformation and hacking campaigns originating mostly from Russia and Iran.
1/17
First of all, my opinion is that these influence operations alone didn’t affect the elections so much, that they actually made a difference.
Unlike in 2016, Trump’s win over Harris was clear and these short-term campaigns didn’t really change that much this time.
2/17
Yet, many of these online campaigns attacked both Harris and Walz on various social media platforms. Especially Walz became a big target after his nomination, and many Russian efforts attempted to defame him.