Expect the most polluted election ever as MSNBC redefines ‘Russia hoax.’

By Holman Jenkins Jr. 

When AP reports that “Putin says Russia prefers Biden to Trump, calling the US president more experienced and predictable,” how should we interpret this? Vladimir Putin hopes to help Donald Trump by tainting Joe Biden? Or by reminding Americans of his past meddling, Mr. Putin’s actually helping Mr. Biden?

Or maybe he really just wants to signal to a Russian audience that he’s not depending on Mr. Trump for a Ukraine resolution?

Get ready for the most polluted election in American memory.

Here’s CNN: “US intelligence officials are watching closely to see if the United States’ support for Ukraine will lead the Russian government to take more risks in potentially interfering in the 2024 presidential election. . . . President Joe Biden’s reliable backing of Kyiv—might be an ‘animating event for the Russians,’ the FBI official said at a briefing with reporters.”

That word “reliable” might have them rolling their eyes in Kyiv.

Adds CNN: “Russia could be motivated to more aggressively meddle in the 2024 election than it did in 2020. But US officials have not publicly identified any examples of that happening yet.”

But I just identified one—Mr. Putin declaring for Mr. Biden in the 2024 election. I identified another recently, Russia using its foreign ministry apparatus to circulate accusations that a company Hunter Biden worked for, Burisma, financed terrorism inside Russia.

This latter claim, promoted through diplomatic channels as deliberate, undisguised Russian policy, is the kind of meddling the U.S. press loves to report. It goes unreported, perhaps because it would remind U.S. voters of the Hunter mess, something Biden supporters don’t want the U.S. public reminded of.

Ask yourself: Which has a bigger effect on our politics? A Russian propaganda video among millions of social media videos posted daily? Or the New York Times and MSNBC touting the video to their influential audiences last week as a Kremlin effort to inflame U.S. politics?

In 2017, Obama intelligence leaders testified that Russia deliberately sought to call attention to its meddling.

Last year, led by NYU researchers, yet another study confirmed that Russian propaganda had zero effect on the 2016 election even as exaggerated and disingenuous claims of Kremlin influence had an incalculable effect on our politics.

Certainly Russian trolls can figure out MSNBC’s business model. Out of the whole melange last week, the one element that most bespoke a clear propaganda purpose was Joe Scarborough’s redefinition of “Russia hoax.” Now, on one channel at least, it means falsely denying the existence of Russian propaganda campaigns (which I’ve never heard anyone do) rather than the documented circulation by the media, Democrats and FBI of false evidence against the Trump campaign.

Look, as I’ve said for nearly 20 years, contemplating a nuclear-armed mafia state isn’t pleasant for American policymakers. Every president has attempted Putin outreach, including Messrs. Trump and Biden.

It also wasn’t news that other governments take an interest in our elections, and that they have access to the internet.

But the giant, fibrillating, man-bites-dog change has been the weaponization of Russia relations in our domestic politics, and not to manage our Putin risk or advance U.S. foreign policy.

Imagine 2020 had turned out differently and it was Mr. Trump who revived Nord Stream II, awarded Mr. Putin the plum of a presidential summit, and said a “minor incursion” in Ukraine might go unpunished. It was a Trump administration that predicted a quick Russian victory, urged the Zelensky government to flee and held back weapons.

In 2017, I fretted about the then-new “Russia interference racket,” about how our sickly elites had become “uninhibited in exploiting” a deadly nuclear rival for shallow partisan purposes. (This was before 51 former intelligence officials lied to the American people about the Hunter Biden laptop.)

I’m waiting for the wise person of either party, a role once played by Sam Nunn for the Democrats, to say we have exceeded all restraint in this regard. I’m waiting for the Abe Rosenthal or Ben Bradlee who sees that reporting accurately on such matters isn’t inconsistent with reporting on Mr. Trump’s own recklessness and irresponsibility.

Voters can recognize both that there’s a problem here and Mr. Trump isn’t the solution. But commentators also never cottoned on to the biggest Trump novelty, from day one placing foreign policy at the center of his pitch.

Voters aren’t supposed to care about foreign policy. He invited his deplorables to ask whether it was serving their interests. The savagery and recklessness of the establishment attack on Mr. Trump strikes me as not unconnected to this fact. In Ukraine, I also suspect, they reaped the whirlwind. Now Mr. Trump may be coming back and we would be idiots—true idiots—not to see his political resurrection since Jan. 6 as largely his enemies’ doing.

A psychiatrist will have to explain why his opponents allowed themselves to be caught red-handed fabricating discrediting material about Mr. Trump (e.g., the Steele dossier) when he supplied them so much authentically discrediting material gratis.

In the meantime, it’s heartening that Democrats are again talking about replacing Mr. Biden before Election Day.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-influence-racket-redux-cnn-msnbc-election-2024-7ba831fa