A former anchor for Kremlin-funded RT says Fox News and the Russian propaganda cable news channel mimic each other.

Liz Wahl is the American former anchor for the U.S. branch of RT TV.  She resigned on the air, in 2014, over the network’s whitewashing of Vladimir Putin’s behavior toward Ukraine.

In an article for The Daily Beast yesterday, Wahl wrote what a boon Trump and Fox News have been to Russian propaganda:

Even as Russian forces surrounded Ukraine, Russian media played clips of Trump calling Putin’s military strategy “genius” and “wonderful.” And to strengthen Russia’s case for invading a democracy, it played footage of Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo [now a Fox contributor] praising Putin and clips from Fox News host Tucker Carlson proudly siding with Russia.

Not surprisingly, Wahl says it was during the Trump campaign and presidency that “Russian media and right-wing media became indistinguishable.”

Today, the chief purveyors of pro-Russian disinformation in the U.S. are now on Fox News. I have warned that quite often the pro-Putin claims on Fox and RT essentially mimic each other. But much of the American public, and even many in the mainstream media, fail to realize the extent to which this disinformation has become part of the fabric of the new media landscape, and therefore, American political discourse.

What makes the situation worse, Wahl says, is how these mind-melded messages get further amplified and further legitimized on social media. But even if Fox fans were to wake up to the extent to which they have become, essentially, Kremlin dupes, I seriously doubt they’d care. Wahl notes:

Recent polling shows Republicans view Putin more favorably than Democrats, perceiving him to be a “stronger leader” than President Biden. Such polling further shows how both Putin and American right-wing media’s messaging appeals to Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and admiration for strong-man authoritarians.

Fox News has long been a threat to American democracy and democratic values. As far back as 2014, Sean Hannity promoted armed insurrection against the U.S. government when he championed lawbreakng rancher Cliven Bundy, e.g. If you ever saw the documentary Outfoxed (for which I and the other original bloggers for this site served as researchers), you may recall that the film discussed how Fox pushed the narrative that George W. Bush had won the election when it was still too close to call, thus setting up Al Gore as a sore loser for questioning the conclusion. As far back as 2008, we’ve been writing about Fox fear mongering about non-existent voter fraud. I could go on and on about how Fox has poisoned America, but I’ll leave it there for now.

Carlson image via screen grab)