Alina Habba’s Desperate Move to Downplay New Russia Scandal Falls Flat

Trump campaign advisers aren’t distancing themselves from Tenet Media, the conservative media operation accused of taking millions of dollars from Russia to spread foreign propaganda. Instead, they’ve decided to defend it.

Trump campaign senior adviser Alina Habba attempted Sunday to brush off the Justice Department indictment, linking the scandal back to the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax” in 2016.

“It’s so obvious,” Habba told Fox News Sunday morning. “The story is now that there’s a criminal investigation about a $10 million investigation into two individuals who had no idea they were being backed by a company that eventually, allegedly, had ties to Russia.”

“So in 2016 what happened? There was the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. The media peddled a story that we now know was funded by members of the DNC, their lawyers, Hillary Clinton was involved in all of this—we know that because she had to pay a fine for doing so,” Habba continued, referring to the DNC and the Clinton campaign’s failure to report the costs of the Trump-Russia dossier research to the Federal Election Commission in 2016.

Habba then went on to elevate the Durham report, an objective bust that failed to find any evidence that the FBI engaged in misconduct while investigating Trump’s ties to Russia, while damning the Mueller report—which left the possibility of Trump-Russia obstruction on the table—as a waste of “so much taxpayer dollars.”

“A $10 million payment to some podcasters who had no idea from some ties allegedly to Russia is now going to make a spin on Russia backing Trump,” Habba added.

The DOJ indictment accused Tenet and its founders of receiving nearly $10 million from employees of Russia Today as part of “a scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

Other entities, even ones on the right, are not so quick to remain aligned with the allegedly compromised media personalities. The fallout from the alleged propaganda scheme lost Tenet’s co-founder Lauren Chen her broadcasting gig with another far-right media group, Blaze Media. Blaze wiped episodes of her podcast from Spotify and deleted her contributor page from its website shortly after the indictment was announced, with Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon telling Semafor that the conservative anchor had been “terminated.”

YouTube also wiped Tenet Media’s content from its platform “after careful review” following the indictment, telling NBC News that its decision to erase the channel and its affiliates was part of “ongoing efforts to combat coordinated influence operations.”

The Russian funds paid for videos by popular far-right personalities, including podcaster Tim Pool and Lauren Southern. Pool described himself as a “victim” in the Tenet scandal.

“I have been contacted by the FBI as a potential victim of a crime,” Pool posted on X on Thursday. “The FBI believes I have information relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation and have requested a voluntary interview. I will be offering my assistance in this matter.”

In a new interview, Donald Trump claims Mark Zuckerberg promised him there’s no way he’ll vote for a Democrat this November.

In a New York magazine interview published on Monday, Trump said that after the assassination attempt against him, Zuckerberg gave him a call to say that he wouldn’t vote against him.

“‘I’ve never supported a Republican before, but there’s no way I can vote for a Democrat in this election,’” Trump recalled the Meta CEO saying. “He’s a guy that, his parents, everybody was always Democrat. He said, ‘I will never vote for the people running against you after watching what you did.’”

Zuckerberg did tell Bloomberg in July, “Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.” But Trump’s new story follows a long-standing feud between the two men. Just last month, Trump re-upped his threat to send Zuckerberg to prison for life if he “does anything illegal” or “cheats” in the 2024 election.

And Trump’s latest claim about Zuckerberg hasn’t been confirmed by anyone but Trump himself. In response to the news, a spokesperson at Meta said, “As Mark has said publicly, he’s not endorsing anybody in this race and has not communicated to anybody how he intends to vote.”

In the same New York magazine interview, Trump also claimed he got kind words from another tech magnate that fateful week: He claims Jeff Bezos gave him a ring as well.

“You know, I got so many nice calls from people I really don’t know. Jeff Bezos called. He said, ‘It is the most incredible thing I’ve ever watched.’ And he appreciated what I did, in the sense of getting up and letting people know,” Trump said. “I said, ‘Despite the fact that you own The Washington Post, I appreciate it.’” Amazon did not respond to New York magazine’s request for comment.

Obviously, Trump could be making all of this up—or it could be the case that more and more tech CEOs really are turning rightward.

Shortly after Kamala Harris released her policy agenda on Sunday evening, users on X spotted something in the metadata: Much of the language appears to have been lifted from Joe Biden’s campaign website.

On Sunday night, X user Corinne Green pointed out that the issues section of Harris’s website contained metadata with language urging voters to reelect Joe Biden. This language was visible when links to the campaign site were shared, and in the website’s description on Google searches.

Sometime late on Sunday night or early Monday morning, the website’s metadata appears to have been changed, with the language asking for Biden to be reelected having been removed.

All of this creates the impression that at least some of the Harris campaign’s policy language was copied and pasted from Biden’s documents. That would be an embarrassing miscue from the Harris campaign, which partly came into being because of a perception that a refresh was needed to garner enthusiasm in the Democratic Party. It doesn’t help that the section on her website about her Israel-Palestine policy seems very similar to what Biden’s campaign was saying. 

Harris’s policy platform should be giving the public a view of the detailed plans her administration hopes to implement if she and Tim Walz win in November. The last thing her campaign needs is an embarrassing misstep, and while this one is relatively small, she’ll need to reassure voters on the fence that her campaign isn’t a retread of Biden’s with a new face.

Kamala Harris released a damning message Monday about Donald Trump, straight from the mouths of former members of his administration.

An advertisement released by the Harris campaign one day before the presidential debate highlights how all “the best people” Trump hired to work in his White House no longer support the Republican nominee. In fact, they have gone out of their way to sound the alarm.

The video includes footage of former Vice President Mike Pence, speaking after Trump’s original January 6 indictment, alleging that Trump pressured Pence not to certify the 2020 election results. The House January 6 investigative committee concluded that the former president had “riled up a mob that hunted his own vice president.”

“Anyone who puts themself over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Pence said at the time.

Last month, special counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment against Trump, following a Supreme Court ruling that claimed that the former president’s conversations with Pence were “official conduct” and could not be used as evidence against him.

The video, which will run on Fox News ahead of the debate Tuesday, also contained the harsh words of former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, former national security adviser John Bolton, and retired General Mark Milley, who called Trump a “wannabe dictator.”

Not only do their words carry a dire warning, but their criticisms have a history of getting under Trump’s skin. When Milley went after Trump in a 2023 profile in The Atlantic, the former president suggested that the then head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff deserved to be put to death.

The ad narration concluded, “Take it from the people who knew him best: Donald Trump is a danger to our troops and our democracy. We can’t let him lead our country again.”

The second presidential debate will air on Tuesday at 9 p.m. on ABC.

Besides stumbling through his speeches onstage, it appears that Donald Trump is also struggling to keep up with basic facts this election season. And even his team has given up.

In a wide-ranging interview with New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi, published on Monday, Trump seemed to be unaware of major news events, as well as basic details about Kamala Harris. During one part of the conversation, Trump predictably went on a tangent about Harris’s Marxist background.

“And she’s Marxist, and that’s, that’s strange in this country because this country will never be a Marxist country. She’s actually—you know, her father is a big promoter of Marxism,” said Trump. Nuzzi pushed back and attempted to fact-check Trump: Harris was raised by her mother and does not have an active relationship with her father. Trump seemed genuinely surprised by the correction.

“I don’t know …” Trump said. “Maybe that’s true, yeah. I just don’t know anything about it. I just know that he’s a Marxist professor,” he responded.

When Nuzzi asked a Trump adviser how it could be the case that Trump appears to have not done his research, the longtime adviser gave a troubling anecdote about Joe Biden’s postdebate interview with George Stephanopoulos. “I called [Trump] and said, ‘I know a little about what happened in the interview. Do you want me to read it to you?’ He said, ‘What interview?’ He didn’t even know about it. I’m like, ‘Mr. President, there’s absolutely no possibility that you don’t know?’” Trump then reportedly asked the adviser what network the interview was airing on so he could TiVo it.

This interaction paints a picture of Trump as a student who refuses to do homework—even if  it means he’ll fail.

But some fault must be placed on Trump’s new ragtag team, as well. Neither Susan Wiles nor Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign chairs, was on the 2016 or 2020 team. And though it seems like Trump may appear to be course-correcting by bringing back Corey Lewandowski, his adviser from 2016, the former president told Nuzzi he wasn’t trying to fix a failing campaign.

“I just like him. Corey’s a character,” Trump said. “But I’m very happy with everybody.”