Trump and Musk Welcome Russian Propaganda After Sanctioning European Disinformation Experts
If there’s any question that the US is now more aligned with Russia rather than Europe, recent State Department decisions have removed all doubt
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In what Will Sommer at The Bulwark has described as the first time the “[Trump] administration has offered assistance to someone from Canada”, the US State Department has intervened to reinstate the visa of Laura (Lauren) Chen, co-founder of an illegally funded media outlet aimed at reaching American audiences with Russian propaganda.
Chen, the Canadian founder of Tenet Media on YouTube – which provided a platform to several right-wing commentators including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin – was exposed in 2024 for taking $10 million from staff at Russia’s state broadcaster RT.
Russia Allegedly Spent $10 Million Funding US Media Company and its ‘Superspreader’ Creators to Push Pro-Kremlin Disinformation
One of the content creators was allegedly paid $400,000 a month for four weekly video productions
According to the indictment, two RT employees channelled money through a shell “investment” arrangement into Tenet, which then paid prominent American right-wing influencers to produce videos attacking Ukraine aid, praising Donald Trump and amplifying divisive domestic themes. Chen lost her US work status and returned to Canada after the scandal, but has now been allowed to re-enter the United States
According to Chen’s recent posts on Instagram and X, her new visa was secured with assistance from officials in the Trump Administration, specifically Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser on consular affairs at the State Department, whom she thanked publicly by name.
Rittenhouse replied: “This Christmas, I’m so happy to help correct the wrongs of the past administration. Being able to bring Lauren and her family back for Christmas would not be possible without new Leadership at the White House, FBI, CBP, and State Department.”
A few days earlier, in response to Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcements of sanctions against five Europeans, Rittenhouse celebrated by reposting a GIF from the far-right British influencer Carl Benjamin, “You get what you fucking deserve!”
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Presented as a defence of free speech, the Trump administration’s visa sanctions on European regulators shield tech platform profits and undermine democratic regulation abroad
These sanctions – prompting EU condemnation – targeted the mastermind of the Digital Services Act, Thierry Breton, and four other individuals who work on detecting online hate speech, extremism and disinformation; Claree Melfod, the co-founder and leader of the Global Disinformation Index: Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon, the two CEOs of HateAid, which provides legal support for victims of online hate speech: and Imran Ahmed, founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Rittenhouse, who retweets the far-right EDL founder Tommy Robinson, and regularly amplifies both Carl Benjamin and Tenet Media’s Tim Pool, commented on the announcement of the ban – “inject into my veins… I love my job” – implying he was involved in the sanctions as well as welcoming back Tenet Media’s co-founder.
The support for Russian paid for influencers spreading disinformation, compared to the US State Department’s targeting of Europeans investigating it, could hardly be more stark.
Musk Aligns with Trump and Putin in Midterm Push
While Elon Musk’s antipathy towards hate speech monitors and the Digital Services Act is commercially obvious – the European Commission fined X €120 million in December 2025 for breaching DSA transparency rules – his support for Russian propaganda channels is slightly more hidden.
The Tenet scheme sits alongside a wider Kremlin influence system overseen by Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy head of the Presidential Administration.
With the demise of Sergey Prigozhin and his infamous troll farms, the Kremlin is diverting more of its propaganda resources into new arms-length companies, and Kiriyenko is the senior official who commissioned the Social Design Agency, Structura and ANO Dialog to run Doppelganger-style cloned news sites and targeted disinformation campaigns against Western audiences.
In a 2024 report summarising aWall Street Journal investigation in Novaya Gazeta Europe noted that Elon Musk was in “regular contact” not only with Vladimir Putin but also with his “senior aide Sergey Kiriyenko,” putting the owner of X in direct conversation with the architect of these operations.
Under the Radar: Unmasking the Coordinated Reach of Russian Doppelgänger Bots
A new generation of information warfare tools still pose the same threat to Ukraine, unity in Europe and the US elections
Investigations into Tenet show that Musk repeatedly boosted content produced by influencers who were being covertly paid with RT money via Chen’s company.
NBC News found that Musk interacted with Tenet-linked posts at least 60 times, including: resharing a Tenet clip defending Donald Trump’s remark that “you won’t have to vote anymore,” which drew tens of millions of views, replying “!!” to a Tenet post attacking NASA diversity training, and reacting approvingly to a Tenet video about “eco-terrorism.”
A separate analysis by Ben Scott, CEO of The Reset Tech, a London-based nonprofit, estimates around 70 Tenet‑related posts were amplified by Musk, combined with roughly 100 combined interactions with three Tenet‑paid influencers (Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson) on X, across topics such as immigration, “wokeness,” and US elections
Researchers also identified at least one viral meme shared by Musk that directly originated with Social Design Agency, the Kremlin contractor Kiriyenko is said to have tasked with building the Doppelganger network. That single retweet by Musk of the Social Design Agency meme mocking Volodymyr Zelensky had over 95 million views.
The amplification of Kremlin narratives and the rehabilitation of Lauren Chen coincide with Elon Musk’s reconciliation with Donald Trump and the MAGA movement ahead of this year’s midterm Congressional elections.
In early January 2026, Musk shared a photograph of a dinner with Donald Trump and Melania Trump at Mar-a-Lago, telling followers he had a “lovely dinner” with “@POTUS and @FLOTUS” and helping push the image viral across X and Instagram.
In parallel, Musk has indicated on X that he is “going all in” on financing Republicans for the 2026 midterms and has begun donating large amounts to GOP-aligned super PACs and congressional campaigns.
It looks as if, with Lauren Chen now once again able to operate inside the US media and political space thanks to help from a senior Trump-era consular official, the scene is set for a further convergence between US Big Tech and Kremlin disinformation architecture in support of Donald Trump and against Europe and Ukraine.
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