jennifer do you speak Russian?

How Russian trolls smeared Sen. John McCain as 'traitor' on social media
Dan Nowicki, The Republic | azcentral.com Published 5:00 a.m. MT Feb. 27, 2018 | Updated 12:31 p.m. MT Feb. 27, 2018

Sen. John McCain discusses the president, the Russian sanctions bill and the need to focus on the major issues, during an interview with The Arizona Republic on Aug. 3, 2017. Thomas Hawthorne/azcentral.com

John McCain
(Photo: Jack Gruber/USA TODAY)

Russian Twitter trolls, now purged from the social network, routinely spread insults and conspiracy theories smearing Sen. John McCain as a "traitor" and a "RINO," Republican In Name Only, during his 2016 reelection campaign and beyond.

An Arizona Republic survey of more than 300 McCain-related tweets collected in an NBC News database of messages indicates the Russian accounts frequently retweeted smears of McCain from other Twitter users as well as sometimes sharing news stories about McCain from azcentral.com and other legitimate news organizations.

That the Russian Twitter trolls sought to discredit McCain, R-Ariz., was perhaps predictable given the six-term senator's longstanding criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who officially sanctioned McCain in 2014. A Kremlin spokesman in May said McCain, the influential chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is known for his "maniacal hatred towards our country."

"It’s no surprise Vladimir Putin’s troll factory has made one of its top targets Senator McCain, who has led the effort in Congress to fight Russian aggression, human-rights abuses and corruption," McCain spokeswoman Julie Tarallo told The Republic in an emailed statement. "He continues working to ensure Russia pays a price for its attack on our democracy while pushing America’s national security leaders to finally strengthen our defenses against foreign interference in cyberspace.”

A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 16 indicted 13 Russian operatives and the St. Petersburg, Russia-based Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-aligned "troll farm" that spread propaganda on social-media platforms during the 2016 elections, on a variety of charges related to an alleged conspiracy to sabotage the lawful U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election, through fraud and deceit.

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Photos: John McCain through the years
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The indictment, which was presented to the grand jury by U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller, describes the Internet Research Agency as a "Russian organization engaged in operations to interfere with elections and political processes."

Twitter has been suspending accounts linked to the troll farm and deleting the tweets. But NBC News, relying on a "partial list of names released by Congress," retrieved more than 200,000 of the Russian-linked tweets and recently published them in an online database.

The NBC News picture is incomplete, but gives more than a glimpse at the Kremlin's Twitter propaganda effort and confirms McCain was targeted with a seemingly indiscriminate array of attacks on his character.


The Russian trolls sometimes would retweet bogus attempts to disparage McCain's military record — he was shot down in 1967 and held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for more than five years — and groundless allegations that later participated in a POW cover-up.

They also seemed to seize on McCain's role the drama surrounding a salacious, unsubstantiated dossier about Trump as well as an incident in which, on the Senate floor, McCain accused Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., of "now working for Vladimir Putin."

In most of the tweets archived in the NBC News database, the Russian trolls amplified attacks on McCain from the senator's right-wing critics who support President Donald Trump, with whom McCain has feuded on-and-off for nearly three years.

The tweets seem to run from the 2016 election cycle, in which McCain defeated Republican challenger Kelli Ward in Arizona's GOP Senate primary and Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick in the general election, into 2017, when McCain emerged as a high-profile check on Trump.

A typical example: A now-suspended account @evagreen69 retweeted this insulting message aimed at McCain from another now-gone account, @Boaz411: "Time to retire you senile old scumbag traitor!"

A now-suspended account @hyddrox at one point retweeted a March 12, 2017, from Twitter user Isabelle H-Gustafson, who still tweets with the handle @izzysroses: "McCain at this point has to be recalled and/or Sensored (sic) he is obstructing this admin at everyturn! out of control!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2019 01:43AM by riverhousebill.

Humh Jennifer I hope you dont lose your job.

Congress Now Wants Twitter to Explain How That Covington Teens ...
[gizmodo.com]...
22 hours ago - ... elder, Nathan Phillips, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in DC amid the ... to indicate it has anything to do with, say, that goddamn Russian troll factory.

This Cortez Slanderous dancer is going to bust youall

The U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Thursday released more than 3,500 advertisements and posts spread by Russian trolls before and after the 2016 U.S. election.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2019 01:58AM by riverhousebill.

White southern racist or a Ruusian troll one of these for sure! Im more inclined to believe Racist but who knws for sure The Cyber War is on Im happy the House Intelligence Committee has decided they need to look at this nathan Phillips smear

Some tech experts worry the Covington story might have been a well-orchestrated misinformation campaign by internet trolls.
Twitter suspended an account some in the media believe was responsible for making the Covington story go viral — but experts worry there were internet trolls pushing the story all along.
CNN tech reporter Donie O’Sullivan floats the possibility Facebook and Twitter might one day determine that Russian trolls were behind pushing the Covington narrative — “Stoking both sides.”



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/24/2019 05:52AM by riverhousebill.