By It’s been a few bad days for Kamala Harris. According to new polling, the vice president is either trailing or tied in the five most important battleground states for the 2024 election.
Newsweek reports that “surveys by Republican pollsters Trafalgar Group of three of the key battleground states which could determine who wins the 2024 election shows that Trump is beating Harris in Pennsylvania (47 percent to 45) and Wisconsin (47 percent to 46).
Harris and Trump are neck-and-neck in Michigan, with the former president narrowly ahead on 47 percent, and the vice president on 46.6.
While Harris has seen waves of enthusiasm for her 2024 bid since she was endorsed by President Joe Biden after he ended his reelection campaign, the surveys showing her not beating Trump in battleground states are largely consistent with polling companies’ previous results.”
Trafalgar isn’t the only polling firm to find those results. Nate Silver, the elections guru noted earlier in the week that there hasn’t been much positive state polling for the Democrat lately.
Setting the convention bounce stuff aside, there just hasn’t been much positive state polling data entering the system for Harris lately. https://t.co/EFKpUM9kET
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 3, 2024
With news of Kamala slumping, the White House has begun reaching into its bag of tricks, and they’ve pulled out an old standby. CNN writes that Biden administration will accuse Russia of a sustained effort to influence the 2024 US presidential election by targeting US voters with “disinformation.”
It’s expected the US will make a series of moves on Wednesday aimed at addressing the Kremlin’s efforts including the White House publicly condemning the actions and the Justice Department announcing law enforcement action targeting the covert Russian campaign, the sources said.
RT, the Russian state media network, is a major focus of the US announcement, the sources said. US officials see the Russian outlet as a key piece of Kremlin propaganda efforts.
The Russian disinformation operation is being laundered through both Americans and non-American voices, four of the sources said.
Taken together, the actions would be the Biden administration’s most significant public response yet to alleged Russian influence operations targeting American voters. After the US accused Iran of trying to hack both the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns last month, Wednesday’s expected actions are a reminder that US officials continue to see Russia as a prominent foreign influence threat to November’s election, the sources said.
BREAKING: Biden administration to hit Russia with sanctions for trying to manipulate U.S. opinion ahead of the election. pic.twitter.com/hLFixHTzRX
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) September 4, 2024
Attorney General Merrick Garland also announced that the Department of Justice has unsealed an indictment in the Southern District of New York, charging two employees of the Russian-backed media network RT with conspiring to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). This indictment is part of broader efforts to hold foreign entities accountable for attempting to influence U.S. public discourse without transparency.
Garland emphasized that FARA, a law enacted nearly a century ago, was designed to ensure that Americans are informed when foreign powers engage in political activities or seek to sway public opinion. He underscored the importance of this law in protecting the integrity of the nation’s free exchange of ideas from covert foreign influence.
The indictment alleges that the defendants orchestrated a nearly $10 million scheme to fund and direct a Tennessee-based company to produce content favorable to the Russian government. This content was then disseminated through U.S.-based social media influencers, with the aim of amplifying domestic divisions in the United States, particularly in ways that aligned with Russia’s interests, such as weakening opposition to its war in Ukraine, according to NBC News.
The indictment does not specify how successful the program by Russia has been in influencing our elections, however. One of the social media accounts documented by Garland’s investigation revealed that a fake CNN account had a whopping seven followers online.
One of the dummy social media accounts that the DOJ cites as part of a so called massive Russian influence op is called “CNN California” and had 7 followers pic.twitter.com/4mCVeK9bj9
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) September 4, 2024
This isn’t the first time that Democrats have leaned into “Russian disinformation” in an attempt to help them in the polls. In 2020, Joe Biden claimed that Hunter Biden’s laptop, which showed his son collecting huge paychecks from foreign foes, was “Russian disinformation.” It was later revealed that the Biden campaign deployed former members of the intelligence community to discredit the laptop story and validate his lie.
The Washington Free Beacon reports that “former CIA deputy director Michael Morell told the House Judiciary Committee in a closed-door interview that he organized a group of 50 former intelligence officials to sign the letter after discussions with Sec. of State Tony Blinken, who served on the Biden campaign. Republicans on the committee revealed details of the interview Thursday, in a letter to Blinken which claims the Biden campaign’s actions “had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story and preventing American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election.”
Morell said Blinken contacted him on Oct. 17, 2020, to discuss a New York Post story that revealed emails from the younger Biden’s abandoned laptop. The ex-spy also said Blinken sent him an article that said the FBI was investigating whether the laptop was part of a ‘disinformation campaign.’ Morell said that Blinken’s outreach ‘triggered’ him to draft a letter that dismissed the release of the emails as a probable Russian disinformation operation. He forwarded it to former CIA Director John Brennan and others to sign.”
Biden’s actions on Russia comes as Kamala Harris has been using TikTok, a company controlled by China, to win over young voters. The company previously came under fire for pushing anti-Israel propaganda and that a huge portion of young people today believe that the Holocaust is a myth.
The FBI director has warned that the app could be used to swing America’s elections, likely in favor of Democrats, since China views Donald Trump as a threat.
[Read More: Harris Goes Abroad For Help]
