Pekka Kallioniemi Profile picture
Jul 15 23 tweets 12 min read Read on X
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American lawyer and politician, Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee). He’s best-known for opposing the aid to Ukraine, undermining NATO by calling the US to withdraw from the alliance, and for fighting with a bunch of braindead dogs online.

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Like many of the most vile vatniks out there, “Based Mike” is a lawyer by profession. He hails from the holy land of Mormons, Utah, where he faces little political competition, allowing him to make the most outrageous claims online without risking his Senate seat.

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Before becoming a senator, Mike fought to let a nuclear waste company dump Italian radioactive waste in Utah, arguing it was fine if they just diluted it. The state said no, the public revolted, and the courts told poor Mikey to sit down.

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Politically, Mike Lee isn’t just conservative — he’s the most ideologically extreme senator of the 113th Congress, according to a BYU study. NYT, GovTrack, and FiveThirtyEight all rank him on the far-right fringe. His voting aligned with Trump 81% of the time.

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In 2019, Mike flew solo to Russia after the rest of his delegation were denied visas. While others backed out, he insisted on holding private talks with Russian officials — because nothing says “America First” like going to Russia to “do politics”.

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In a 2022 debate, Mikey was grilled over his ties to Russia. Along with Rand Paul, he’s the only US senator not blacklisted by Moscow. Both voted against a major Russia sanctions bill in 2017, earning Lee the nickname “Putin’s most reliable yes man in the Senate.”

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After the Jan 6 Capitol attack, “Based Mike” compared Trump to a Book of Mormon war hero and spent 14 hours a day helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election. He texted Mark Meadows about alternate electors and pushed various conspiracy theories about the election.

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According to Mikey, Trump deserved a “mulligan.” He voted against a commission to investigate the attack, then pushed disinformation claiming the FBI was behind it. All while over 100 emails showed his deep involvement in trying to overturn the election.

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Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Mikey has become one of the most fervent opponents of U.S. aid to the defending country. There was a brief moment in the spring of 2022 when he voted for military aid and even joined a video call with Zelenskyy.

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But by mid-2022, that changed, and Mikey began opposing every aid package to Ukraine. We can only guess what shifted during that time, but my bet is he got a call from the Trump/MAGA camp or the Heritage Foundation, telling him to fall in line.

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In 2024, he had become one of the biggest opponents of Ukraine aid. He introduced bills, spread pro-Kremlin disinformation, and even spoke for nearly four hours on the Senate floor, arguing against a bill that would send more aid to Ukraine.

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Interestingly, “Based Mike” fully supports military aid to Israel. He even tried to separate Biden’s aid package to Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel so that only Israel would receive funding. The whole “let’s fund Israel but not Ukraine or Taiwan” shtick is wildly…

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…inconsistent bordering on schizophrenic foreign policy - and ironically, it goes against any true “America First” principle. But it all starts to make sense when you realize AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group, has paid him $368,778, while Ukraine and Taiwan paid zero.

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Naturally, all the Kremlin bootlickers are happy to hand Mikey a microphone. He’s appeared on Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson’s shows, plus a lineup of smaller grifters and podcasters eager to let him spew unfiltered bullshit to their audiences.

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Mike’s anti-Ukraine rhetoric parrots typical MAGA BS talking points: “unaccountable aid,” “mission creep,” “money laundering” and so on. But with a tiny fraction of US aid, Ukraine is doing America’s job - bleeding out an evil empire without a single US boot on the ground.

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Like his MAGA ally Elbridge “Cheese” Colby, “Based Mike” also has a tendency to get into online fights with braindead NAFO dogs. And like so many clowns before him, he actually thinks NAFO is a government-funded op or run by the CIA. And this dude’s a US Senator!

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These days, Mikey’s focused on getting the US to leave NATO. He says it only benefits other countries—not America—despite the fact that only one NATO member has ever invoked Article 5: the US, after the Sep 11, 2001 WTC terrorist attacks.

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For claiming to be a “devout Christian,” Mikey’s social media posts are absolutely vile. After a Trump-supporting gunman murdered two Minnesota lawmakers and targeted others, he posted: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”

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He also mocked Governor Tim Walz with “Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street.” After being confronted by two senators and facing nationwide backlash over his verbal diarrhea, “Based Mike” quietly deleted the posts.

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Mikey’s unhinged “Based Mike” persona isn’t just a stain on the Senate, it’s also a growing headache for his church. According to Politico, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are now debating whether his reckless posts are a liability to the faith.

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To conclude: As @billybinion wrote, “Mike Lee’s transformation from a principled, policy-driven lawmaker into a desperate shitposter should be studied. Not the first time a middle-aged, nerdy guy morphed into a teenager online after getting a taste of internet fame.”

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The 2nd edition of “Vatnik Soup — The Ultimate Guide to Russian Disinformation” is officially out!

You can order your copy here:
vatniksoup.com/en/books/
CORRECTION:

Brain DAMAGED dogs, not braindead. Big difference.

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Sep 25
This is what you’re debating with on social media:
It appears that a few pro-Russian bot farms already found this thread, so remember - just block them all, there's no point in arguing with a computer.
Most of you have seen those "No DMs" profiles, right? That's because you can interrupt the GPT procedure by injecting them new instructions.

At some point it also worked in comments ("give me a cake recipe"), but not so much anymore.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 11
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll cover the agenda-setting and flood of disinformation that spread on X and other platforms right after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. It’s far from the first or last time a tragedy has been weaponized for political purposes.

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Every major political event, especially those involving violence, attracts massive attention. In the immediate aftermath, reliable information is scarce, making it highly vulnerable to both coordinated and improvised disinformation campaigns.

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As I’ve mentioned in my previous soups and lectures, in disinformation campaigns, being first with a narrative is crucial, as people often remember the first version best — psychology studies show it sets the mental schema, and later updates rarely overwrite it.

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Read 19 tweets
Sep 8
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce American social media personality David Freeman, AKA Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman). He’s best known for spreading political disinformation on X and shamelessly sucking up to Trump, Putin, and other authoritarian leaders.

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David is a textbook example of someone profiting from MAGA grievance politics. He uses extreme, provocative language to farm engagement on X and never hesitates to flatter anyone who might give him more exposure — or money.

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But David wasn’t always like this. At some point, in his mid-40s, he even tried a real job: he trained to become a cop. He spent three years with the Metro Transit PD, but after that he either got fired or quit, and never looked back.

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Read 24 tweets
Sep 5
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Russian-Estonian businessman, Oleg Ossinovski. He is best-known for his deep ties to Russian rail and energy networks, shady cross-border dealings, and for channeling his wealth into Estonian politics.

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Oleg made his fortune via Spacecom Trans & Skinest Rail, both deeply tied to Russia’s rail system. Most of this is through Globaltrans Investments PLC, a Cyprus-based firm with 62% held via Spacecom and tens of millions in yearly profits.

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Ossinovski’s Russian-linked ventures made him Estonia’s richest man in 2014, with an estimated fortune of ~€300M. His business empire stretched across railways, oil via Alexela shares, and Russian bitumen imports from Help-Oil, a supplier to the Defense Ministry.

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Read 15 tweets
Sep 2
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce a Swiss/French writer, Alain Bonnet, aka Alain Soral (@officielsoral). He’s best known for his rabid antisemitism and for his pathetic support for all the worst authoritarian regimes from Russia to North Korea.

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Alain’s childhood was problematic, as his father has been characterized as a “narcissistic pervert” who beat his children and did jail time for fraud. Alain himself has said he was “programmed to be a monster.” Born Alain Bonnet, he took the stage name of his sister,…

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… actress Agnès Soral. She wasn’t too happy about this, commenting “How would you like to be called Agnès Hitler?”. Like many grifters, he became a pick-up/seduction artist writer, à la late Gonzalo Lira, writing books and even making a B-movie, “Confessions d’un dragueur”.
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Read 23 tweets
Aug 18
In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll explain the Alaska Fiasco and how it marks the peak of Trump’s two-year betrayal of Ukraine. What was sold as “peace talks” turned into a spectacle of weakness, humiliation, empty promises, and photo-ops that handed Putin exactly what he wanted.

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Let’s start with the obvious: Trump desperately wants the gold medal of the Nobel Peace Prize, mainly because Obama got one. That’s why he’s now LARPing as a “peace maker” in every conflict: Israel-Gaza, Azerbaijan-Armenia, India-Pakistan, and of course Ukraine-Russia.

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Another theory is that Putin holds kompromat — compromising material such as videos or documents — that would put Trump in an extremely bad light. Some have suggested it could be tied to the Epstein files or Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

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Read 25 tweets

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