Editor’s note, 10/23/19: Yesterday, we learned that Hillary Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill claimed that she was referring to Republicans, not Russians, as “grooming” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for a third-party run. After further review of the audio where Clinton makes this statement, as well as a transcript of the segment, we still interpret her as referring to Russia as “grooming” Gabbard.
When CNN initially asked Merrill about Clinton’s comments and if she was referring to Gabbard, he said, “If the nesting doll fits,” without telling the network that it had misinterpreted the comment. He also told CNN, “This is not some outlandish claim. This is reality. If the Russian propaganda machine, both their state media and their bot and troll operations, is backing a candidate aligned with their interests, that is just a reality, it is not speculation.”
By the end of the day, Merrill would have had access to not only CNN’s story, but a trove of nonpartisan and partisan articles that interpreted the comment in the same way. However, it wasn’t until that night that Merrill suggested on Twitter that everyone had gotten that part of the story wrong.
If Clinton truly meant that Republicans were “grooming” Gabbard, this issue remains: It was said without providing evidence, making the statement invalid.
We encourage our readers to listen to the original audio here and read a transcript of the segment here.
This week, Hillary Clinton claimed without evidence that Russia is “grooming” Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to be a third-party candidate in the 2020 presidential election.
Clinton’s allegations, made on a podcast hosted by former Obama adviser David Plouffe, have coursed through nonpartisan and partisan media since the interview aired two days ago. However, there’s no evidence to back up Clinton’s implicit suggestion that Gabbard is coordinating her campaign with Russia.
Clinton made additional claims that 2016 presidential candidate Jill Stein and Gabbard are “Russian assets.”
Gabbard rejected that notion during this week’s Democratic debate. She previously dismissed the idea of running on the third-party ticket.
What did Clinton say?
Clinton, who alluded to but didn’t name Gabbard directly, said during the show: “I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on someone who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians.”
Clinton spokesperson Nick Merrill confirmed she was referring to Gabbard by saying, “If the nesting doll fits.”
Clinton also said on the podcast that Russian media and bots support Gabbard’s campaign, which is true.
During the interview, Clinton essentially called both Gabbard and Stein Russian assets.
“That’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up,” Clinton said of Gabbard’s imagined third-party candidacy. “Which she might not, because she’s also a Russian asset. … They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate.”
Support from Russia and comparisons to Stein
Since launching her campaign, Russian state-run media and social media trolls have lobbed enthusiastic support at Gabbard. She has received frequent mentions from RT or Russia Today, the Kremlin-backed propaganda factory that fronts as a news outlet, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy.
Gabbard quickly began to appear in social media posts linked to Russian propaganda soon after announcing her candidacy. While tracking 800 social media accounts connected to Russian propaganda efforts in the United States, an arm of the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge discovered Gabbard in three of the top 15 links pushed by the accounts. The social media profiles began spreading those URLs just a few days after Gabbard announced her run for president.
During the Democratic debate in July, Gabbard criticized fellow candidate Sen. Kamala Harris’s record on criminal justice, and the hashtag #KamalaHarrisDetroyed emerged on Twitter. The New York Times reported that a network of bot accounts boosted the hashtag, while noting that there isn’t evidence that Gabbard’s campaign coordinated with the bot network.
Likely adding fuel to Russia’s support are Gabbard’s foreign policy positions and perceived alliances.
She has a track record of condoning leaders with authoritarian bents and the occasional dictator, like Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister who revoked Kashmir’s autonomy this year, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In 2017, Gabbard met with al-Assad, who was facing a string of allegations that he had used chemical weapons on Syrians. Those suspicions were confirmed, but after their meeting, Gabbard said she was skeptical that al-Assad had used the weapons. Critics began calling Gabbard a puppet for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has sided with the al-Assad regime.
Gabbard’s backing from Russia overlaps with conservative and far-right enthusiasm for the candidate. She has bolstered allegations of tech and media bias, appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program to air her own claims of bias against her campaign. And aside from some Trump-like foreign policy leanings, some of her comments are reminiscent of Trump’s, like her argument that the media and Democratic National Committee would rig this week’s debate.
Gabbard’s policy positions and attention from Russian propaganda artists have garnered her regular comparisons to Stein, who ran on the Green Party ticket in 2016, leading to criticism from liberals that she drew votes away from Clinton.
Russia’s 2016 election interference included support for Stein, whose campaign had pro-Russia elements. During an RT dinner in 2015, Stein was invited to sit with Putin, and her positions seemed in line with Russia’s when it came to the country’s conflict with Ukraine.
Reactions to Gabbard and Russia
A former Clinton campaign policy aide, Laura Rosenberger, also works for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which is following Russian disinformation efforts and how they connect to Gabbard.
Rosenberger told the New York Times that “The Russian activity could be part of a longer-term effort to drive a wedge among Democrats. This messaging has echoes of 2016.”
During the 2016 election, Russia’s disinformation campaign included efforts to sow division among the Democratic party. Bot support of Stein is one example, another being Russian propaganda that focused on and exacerbated conflict between the Democratic party, Clinton and candidate Bernie Sanders.
Hours before the Democratic debate on Tuesday, former South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers accused Gabbard of being “a puppet for the Russian government,” alleging that she is “not just working for the United States of America.”
During the debate, Gabbard addressed Sellers’s comments, as well as this New York Times article, casting them as “completely despicable.”
Leading up to Clinton’s comments this week, several nonpartisan publications have reported stories that included speculation that Gabbard is up to something, without naming or providing evidence for what that thing could be. The New York Times article that Gabbard criticized during the debate literally ran with the headline “What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?”
The Times article seemed to largely be drawing from this piece in The Atlantic from September. Edward-Isaac Dovere relied on anonymous sources to write: “Many high-level Democrats I spoke with for this story, who insisted on anonymity to share their true feelings about her, suspect that Gabbard is up to something other than actually trying to win the party’s nomination—even if they can’t quite identify what her goal is.”
The Atlantic story also mirrored Clinton’s suggestion that Gabbard will make a Trump-boosting, third-party run, based on conversations with unnamed sources.
Contact Big If True editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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