For four straight years i fought for american workers like i would fight for my own family. I took care of our economy like i would take care of my own company. Yeah, yeah, you did. You did, donald, run economies run america's economy into the ground just like you did your businesses which filed for bankruptcy a total of six times, and also your failing weird truth social thing. Which is like down 70% this year. And oh, wait until you hear trump's world salad plan to make child care more affordable. Also tonight, judge tanya chutkan shuts down the effort by trump's lawyers to put a halt to the election interference case until after the november election. And late today, the judge released a new calendar in the case. Plus, the right's dishonest claims about communities being overrun by migrant crime. And how fox and elon musk are helping trump to amplify those lies. But we begin tonight with russia still listening and still interfeing in our elections. That is what we learned when the justice department announced indictments and sanctions wednesday in a scheme that sounds straight out of 2016. The doj charged two russian media executives in an alleged plot to illegally funnel millions of dollars to rightwing influencers by way of a protrump media outlet. Specifically, the department charged two employees of russian backed media company rt with nearly with a nearly $10 million plan to fund an unnamed tennessee content creation company as one of their covert projects to influence american politics. The company's description matches that of tennessee based tenet media, according to a review by nbc news of details included in the indictment. In a related but separate legal action, prosecutors seized 32 russian controlled web domains tied to a broader russian influence campaign accused of spreading propaganda through bogus news sites to american voters. An affidavit supporting seizing the domains shows information detailing a series of topics, russian actors wanted amplified in the influencers' content, things like encroaching universal poverty, record inflation, the halting of economic growth, unaffordable prices for food and essential goods, risk of job loss for white americans. Privileges for people of color, perverts, and the disabled. Constant lies of the u. S. Political party administration about the real situation in the country. Threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants, including new immigrants from ukraine. Overspending on foreign policy and at the expense of the interests of white u. S. Citizens. Constant lies to the voters by u. S. Political party b in power and last but not least, america is suffering in defeat despite candidate b's efforts, we're being drawn into the war. Our guys will die in ukraine. Now, if that also sounds like a list of protump rightwing talking points or frankly your average day on fox, it essentially is. But it also highlights how russia launders its propaganda into the american psyche, especially through the use of social media, which is why tenet media came in handy. The indictment notes company one, which describes itself as a network of commentators that focus on western political and cultural issues, the exact same language used by tenet media on its website and social media channels and identifies six commentators as its talent. The indictment doesn't name them but tenet media has six rightwing youtube commentators on its roster. Tim pool, benny johnson, dave rubin, taylor hanson, laurn southern, and matt christiansen. And you will be forgiven if you're asking yourself, who? just know that some of them are prominent magalebrities, they deny involvements in posts on elon musk's twitter. Tim pool says he and others were deceived and victims. Dave rubin claims he knew nothing about this. They suggest the unnamed commentators were unaware they were being paid by russian efforts, but a look into the presence of some of these creators' content shows what russia was looking for. What else is going on with ukraine these days? it's not just that we're funding the war. Everyone knows we're funding the war, if you're paying for the war, maybe that means you're in the war, but we have never gotten authorization for this war. Our leaders keep telling us this is the most important thing in town. This is psychotic, ukraine is the enemy of this country. Ukraine is our enemy, being funded by the democrats. I will stress again, one of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is ukraine. Ukraine is the greatest threat to this nation and to the world. We should rescind all funding and financing, pull out all military support and apologize to russia. Apologize to russia. Of course, it's not like russia had to pay everyone since we know there are elected officials willing to push the kremlin line for free. Vladimir putin has not said he wants to go march across europe and take europe. And the reality is, ukraine is not even a nato member nation. But if you want to know something, lloyd austin and the others here, more than anything, want to send your uncles, your cousins, and your sons and daughters to the front lines in ukraine. I will not vote for one more dollar to ukraine. I will not vote for one more piece of materiale to ukraine. We're far too entankaled in this conflict. I believe we have extended this conflict. What's in america's best interest to accept ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the russians and we need to bring this war to a close. You know, i know you might have been surprised not to see former fox host tucker carlson in there, but he does make an appearance in the justice department's indictment, just not by name. The indictment reveals that one of the indicted rt employees shared a video of a well known u. S. Political commentator visiting a grocery store in russia, a likely reference to tucker's shopping trip when he marvels at how much better it was shopping there then at home ahead of the interview where he did but literally sit in vladimir putin's lap and hug him like santa claus. Later, a producer emailed the founder saying they want me to post it, it feels like overschilling. The two founderoffs the media company are also unnamed but tenet media is registered to two people named liam donovan and lauren chen. Chen was fired from her job as a commentator for right wing blaze media. She had contributed to videos to its blaze tv. It seems the reality of it all is you hear these narratives, ukraine is our true enemy, or the economy is doing so terribly, it's in ruin, inspied of ample evidence to the contrary. How the white man is falling behind because the government is giving preferential treatment to blacks and brown people. Remember the twin boogiemen of dei and critical race theory? you hear these things and think these are right wingers being the miserable wretches they always are, when it turns out they might also be getting cash apps from mother russia to say it. It's not like some genius idea. The russians are just banking on the things right wingers are already hopped up on to scare white voters to vote for the candidate vladimir putin wants to win, and no surprise, his preferred candidate is this guy. Russia, you had a relationship with them and north korea. But nobody was tougher with russia than me. Joining me now is david corn, washington bureau chief for mother jones, and anand gear dawes, thank you for being here. David, i will start with you. It is sort of remarkable to see the complete capture of the u. S. Republican party by prorussian interests. So this group that is now indicted, it's not like they had to work hard. The right has already been precaptured to the russian side. What do you make of this indictment and what it has revealed? you know, we have to look at this a little bit in historical context. This isn't coming out of nowhere. This is now the third election in a row that the russians have tried to intervene to help donald trump. They did it in 2016. And donald trump said it wasn't happening. He lied. He aided and abetted the attack. And the whole republican party, most of it, and the conservative movement ended up agreeing with him because they didn't want to be caught cross swords with him on this point. Right there, he led them into this russian denialism. In 2020, we kind of forget about this because trump didn't win, but ukrainian officials who were tied to russian intelligence according to who, according to trump's own treasury department, were putting out disinformation about joe biden and hunter biden. It didn't work, but it made the election close. And the right wing was amplifying this stuff, rudy giuliani and others, fox news, over and over again. So the russians have a pretty clear idea about how to play this. It's nothing new for them. They have had years of experience. And here they are out there with these rightwing commentators, also with these websites that are out there ginning up right wingers to push these talking points as we get closer to the election. It's going on, and the right has just refused to acknowledge this. And for some, it's very profitable to not acknowledge it. Yeah, and that's where i want to come to you. You have tangled with some of these folks who were annoyed you were criticizing the billionaire class. To me, getting at these people, who are a lot of people watching this show don't know who tim pool and those people are, and that is because they're trying to capture a younger demographic. They're taking that russian capture and marketing it down to younger and younger receivers of information. Yeah, we have a post up at the ink tonight trying to look at this indictment in a larger light. And i would say a couple things. First, there are oo lot of things country can do to each other, particularly when they're powerful countries like russia. Binders full of choices available to vladimir putin. You can take out power grids. You can do stuff on banking systems. You can bomb things. You can do assassinations. The whole slew of things. I think first we have to think about the fact that in these three elections as david has talked about, basically the era we have lived in the last decade plus, the russian weapon of choice to sabotage the united states of america and push it into democratic decay is the inflammation of our discourse. I think that's really significant. Like, i don't think these operations necessarily have tilted elections or have that enormous an effect. We are we have our own problems in this country that we don't need russian help to create, but it is their judgment of our achilles heel that is so revealing here. And when you look at some of these people, these very inflammatory people who they have been funding, it makes you realize, like, regular people at home, you're being manipulated to hate your neighbor more than you otherwise would. You are being manipulated to feel like everything is hopeless. You are being manipulated into these positions. And in 2016, by the way, they did this to the left and the right. It was all over the place. And i think it actually fills me with a certain kind of hope that maybe this country is not as, you know, gone in terms of toxicity and the way we see each other and relate to each other as we perceive ourselves to be when we go online, when we go on youtube, when we go on x. Maybe a certain amount of what has happened to us is this, you know, forced inflammation from the outside because it is their judgment that that, that way we relate to each other, that way we see each other, the way we talk to each other will bring us down. They're very particular, david, in believing that race is one of those fault lines they can really manipulate the most. They did this in 2016. We were both talking about this for the last three elections. Let me read from the mueller report a little bit. Ira facebook groups, active during the 2016 campaign, covered a range of political issues and included purported conservative groups with named such as being patriotic, stop all immigrants, secured borders, and tea party news, purported black social justice groups, black matters, and don't shoot us, lgbtq groups, and religious groups, united muslims of america, they tried to find these fault lines that already exist in american society and try to push them, hoping that will elect republicans. Well, we know they have been doing this throughout the cold war, too, looking at racial relations in the united states. In the last few years they have kind of moved internally to whip it up for us so there's more hate among americans. If you look at some of the attachments, you quoted some in the opening here, into the affidavit of this operation, called doppleganger on the russian side, it's pretty stunning. They have a whole project about making mexico seem a threat because if mexico is seen as a threat to americans, that's going to help donald trump. So they're very savvy. I don't think it takes a lot to be this savvy here. And the sad thing is that the conservatives and the right wingers and republicans just play into this. It didn't have to be that way. In 2016, mitch mcconnell and other republicans could have joined the obama administration and said stay out of our elections, but they said no. And here we are today. And anand, there is on the other side, there is the pure capitalism of that, tim pool and these people saying, gosh, we didn't know we were getting russian money, the idea they're enriching these content creators and then getting them to say from their chest russian talking points, i guess it's a good gig if you can get it and you can look yourself in the mirror after. Here's the thing, if we're being honest with ourselves. They're paying some people who fit this kind of inflammatory burn it all down mode and they're finding some of them and paying them and getting their money's worth maybe, but the reality is, there is a large number of people speaking to this country in various forms who are behaving in similar ways, who maybe are not being paid, maybe are and we don't know yet. But this is in some ways this kind of inflammatory burn it all down, this pitch of i'm the truth teller and only i will tell you the truth, and everybody they are lying to you, all this kind of, this whole thing, it's a vibe that is quite widespread beyond a handful of people, and i think for people watching this who are not responsible for bringing in indictments, i think it's important to think about how what we consume, what we read, because a lo