Tenet Media, the Tennessee-based home of several far right, Trumpist social media “influencers,” has been a recipient of Russian funding totaling nearly $10 million (Tennessean [1]).
An indictment unsealed Wednesday [2] alleges a Tennessee content creation company was the tool a team of Russian propagandists used to infiltrate U.S. audiences with Kremlin-backed messaging.
Two Russian nationals who worked for Russia Today, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, were indicted on accusations they funneled nearly $10 million to a Tennessee-based online content creation company to publish English-language videos on social media sites like TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube. The company’s more than 2,000 videos posted in the last 10 months have been viewed more than 16 million times just on YouTube, according to the indictment.
The indictment, unsealed in the federal court for the Southern District of New York, doesn’t identify the Tennessee company, but descriptions in the indictment match those of Tennessee-based Tenet Media.
The funding went to clowns like this (via Tennessee Holler [3]). Of course, in their desperate attempt to avoid looking like they were on the take, two of the commentators (Benny Johnson and Tim Pool) insisted they “were deceived and are victims… The show is produced in its entirety by our local team without input from anyone external to the company” (CNN [4]).
In other words, they swear they’d be licking Moscow’s boots for free.
It is yet another example of Moscow gaining [5] control [6] of the [7] Republican [8] Party [9] and Conservatism, Inc.