Trump Most Closely Matches Kremlin Anti-Western Narrative Documentary Filmmaker Says

US media is report­ing on claims by a film­mak­er who has doc­u­ment­ed Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da that of all the US lead­ers, for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump most­ly close­ly fits the Krem­lin’s anti-West nar­ra­tive. Accord­ing to a Busi­ness Insid­er report:

A film­mak­er who has exten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da said this week that of all the US lead­ers, for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump fit “neat­ly” into the Krem­lin’s anti-West nar­ra­tive. In an inter­view with The Wash­ing­ton Post, Max­im Poz­dorovkin — whose award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary “Our New Pres­i­dent” fol­lows Trump’s elec­tion in 2016 as depict­ed by Rus­si­a’s state-linked media — gave his take on Moscow’s long-stand­ing pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign against the US and the West. Poz­dorovkin told The Post that in the decade lead­ing up to Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine, Rus­sians had been fed the same mes­sage “over and over” by Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s gov­ern­ment that the West was con­stant­ly attempt­ing to “sti­fle and destroy” their soci­ety. He said Trump “fits neat­ly” in Moscow’s pro­pa­gan­da efforts because he could be por­trayed as the “one Amer­i­can leader who was­n’t try­ing to destroy the Russ­ian way of life.” In the con­text of that nar­ra­tive, Poz­dorovkin said, the domes­tic back­lash that Trump faced in the US — no mat­ter the real rea­son — could be framed as being fueled by anti-Rus­sia inter­ests. “It’s been an infor­ma­tion war — a total­ly one-sided infor­ma­tion war — and it has been waged so ful­ly and art­ful­ly that it’s made a lot of what’s hap­pen­ing now pre­emp­tive­ly pos­si­ble,” he told the out­let. “The Russ­ian media has been total­ly shad­ow­box­ing for years; no one was fight­ing back,” he said lat­er in the inter­view. “But that does­n’t real­ly mat­ter. If you ingrain this mes­sage of vic­tim­hood so com­plete­ly, what it does is when there’s any kind of Putin aggres­sive action, as there is now, a lot of peo­ple in Rus­sia don’t see it as aggres­sive. “They just see it as stand­ing up for their way of life.” Trump and Putin met five times dur­ing Trump’s pres­i­den­cy, though details of these meet­ings were han­dled secre­tive­ly, as The New York Times report­ed in 2019. Trump’s deal­ings with Rus­sia and appar­ent open­ness toward Russ­ian help dur­ing his 2016 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign attract­ed wide scruti­ny dur­ing much of his presidency.

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The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed last Octo­ber on a warn­ing by the US Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty that Russ­ian influ­ence actors were attempt­ing to pro­mote claims by then-Pres­i­dent Trump that mail-in vot­ing will lead to wide­spread vot­er fraud.