A nation must think before it acts.
November 26, 2019
Post by Clint Watts
Last week, FPRI’s Foreign Influence Election 2020 (FIE 2020) Project published its first analysis of Russia’s media mentions of the 2020 Democratic candidates. The FIE 2020 database now includes updates since its first analysis, bringing the total number of articles analyzed to 1,887 since January 1, 2019. This week, FIE 2020 presents an analysis of the Russian media mentions of the GOP candidates for the 2020 election.
The GOP field consists of the incumbent (President Donald Trump) and three challengers who have entered (and exited) the field at different times—former Governor Bill Weld, former Governor Mark Sanford and former Congressman Joe Walsh. The stories analyzed produced a dozen mentions in total for Weld, Sanford and Walsh. Stories where GOP challengers were mentioned predominantly noted their entrance in the race and, in the case of Sanford, his exit from the presidential race. Only one story related to the GOP challengers demonstrated a Kremlin perspective: a September 25 post on RT that pitted Weld and Walsh as pro-impeachment as compared to Democratic Congresswoman Gabbard, who was pitted as anti-impeachment.
President Donald Trump surfaced in 1,685 mentions in the FIE 2020 database since January 1. Figure 3 (above) represents the distribution of mentions and Figure 4 (below) shows the count of mentions assessed from each Russian media outlet (counterparts to Figure 1 and Figure 2 for the Democratic candidates).
Analyzing Trump from Russia’s perspective proves to be quite complicated as he serves as both the head-of-state and a candidate in the 2020 election. Russia’s mentions of Trump suggest a nuanced approach with respect to the President:
A future post will more deeply examine the themes and narratives of Kremlin state-sponsored outlets. However, a brief examination and comparison of the positive and negative mentions of President Trump illustrates dual lines of influence from Putin’s information-warfare wizards. Here are a few additional observations: