by Susan Duclos, All News Pipeline:

CNN has jumped on yet another “fake news” bandwagon as they attempt to convince their dwindling audience that Russian bots are behind the new #WalkAway movement, in order to “wound Dems in midterms.”

Their hot mess of an article titled “Russian bots are using #WalkAway to try to wound Dems in midterms” (Archive is link here), begins with… what else, Russia, Russia, Russia, lamenting how “Russian officials worked to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s campaign,” (Yes, they still haven’t gotten over losing control of the public and President Trump’s election) before diving straight in to the conspiracy theory that the #WalkAway campaign is only popular on social media because Russian bots are pushing it.

There are two main issues I would like to address here.

First: CNN, and all the liberal media’s obsession with Russia, has Americans completely tuning out the entire subject.

They scream Russia every single day and Americans are turning the channel because they sound like a broken record at this point. Evidence of this comes from Gallup, which polls on what problems concern Americans the most, and for June 2018, after two years of the liberal media, none more so than CNN, obsessing over everything Russian, so few Americans worried about the “situation with Russia” that it didn’t even register one percent. There is simply an asterisk,  indicating not enough people listed Russia as a problem to add up to one percent.

The thing is, CNN has been aware of the lack of public interest in Russia since at least January 2018, when CNN reporter Maeve Reston, bluntly stated “Remember, even in 2016 when we went out to these swing states and talked to voters, there was still this fear that things were suddenly going to turn down again. You don’t feel that as much anymore. And I’m so interested to see how the Russia investigation affects things, because so far, out in these districts when you talk to people about Russia–and that’s all we talk about at CNN basically–they say they don’t care.”

What this tells us is that the media wants Americans to be interested in Russia, the media has pushed everything from Russian “sex coaches (CNN), to digging through the trash in Russia (Yes, CNN again), in order to force Americans to be as obsessed with Russia as they are, and over the months Americans interest in Russia-related issues has decreased, almost as much as CNN’s ratings.

CNN had a horrible week, managing just 669,000 primetime viewers and losing to the following networks: HGTV, USA, Food Network, TLC, Hallmark, and more. MSNBC fared much better in primetime, finishing third behind HGTV with 1.342 million viewers. 

HGTV and Nickelodeon — home of Spongebob Squarepants — wiped the floor with CNN and MSNBC in total day viewership.

Second: CNN Fake News about the #WalkAway exodus.

Via CNN:

The most recent example of this strategy is the #WalkAway hashtag, which is presented as a grassroots effort by former Democrats who are critical of the party’s alleged intimidation, confrontation and lack of civility and want people to walk away from the party.

Emphasis mine.

Alleged? Did the writer of that piece really say “alleged,” when the intimidation, confrontation and lack of civility, has been documented and is indisputable? When a grown man rips a MAGA hat, and some hair, from a teenager trying to eat a meal, that is confrontation. When liberal celebrities like Peter Fonda, threaten President Trump’s 11-year old son, that is “lack of civility,” not to mention a crime. When Maxine “Mad Max” Waters encourages supporters to gather mobs to accost Trump administration officials, that is intimidation.

There is nothing alleged about any of those examples, or the 500+ documented examples of violence, intimidation and harassment, going back to 2015. The level of disconnect with reality on CNN’s part is truly astounding.

Moving along to the actual fake news portion of CNN’s piece.

However, #WalkAway has also now been connected to Kremlin-linked Russian bots, and it is now the seventh most popular Russia-influenced hashtag as of this writing, according to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks Russian influence on Twitter as part of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative of the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund. The purpose of this now-astroturf campaign is to manipulate public opinion by creating the illusion that this is a popular movement. In reality, #WalkAway has become pure propaganda, a psychological operation.

Again, emphasis mine.

First the Hamilton 68 site is not non-partisan and neither is the German Marshall Fund, because when you look at the advisory board they are made up of warmongering, NeverTrumpers that want war with Russia. The Hamilton 68 site claims to be monitoring “Russian linked” social media accounts, but has never revealed what accounts they are monitoring, nor provided any evidence at all that any of the accounts are in any way connected to Russia.

The media attempts to give them legitimacy by citing them as experts, then uses that media-manufactured legitimacy to publish fake news which cites the shadowy Hamilton 68 group. Talk about a circle-jerk!

Calling the #WalkAway movement astroturfed is demonstrably false, as is evidenced by the very real American, gay hairdresser from New York, who created the movement, Brandon Straka.

Mr. Straka has a message for CNN as well regarding their assertion, as he responds to their article on Twitter stating “The Grand Poobah of #FakeNews, @CNN, whose deceit was instrumental in red-pilling me, decides 2break the silence &finally address #WalkAway Campaign. If anyone at CNN would care 2speak 2the campaign’s founder instead of recycling yawn-worthy Russian bot excuses I’m here 4you.”

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