Ever since I started writing critically about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s apparent lack of knowledge on the Russian military threat and the nature of the Vladimir Putin regime, various conservative websites that usually run my column have been refusing to do so. These outlets of conservative opinion seem to believe that Trump is a legitimate conservative, and that his followers can’t be offended with negative information about the candidate. Some of them had previously run articles about Vladimir Putin being a Christian statesman or anti-terrorist leader.
Major factors in this disturbing trend among the conservative media include Russian propaganda organs like RT (Russia Today) in the U.S. and the work of Russian trolls in spreading disinformation. Some of these trolls are self-described American conservatives who openly cite RT as a credible source of information.
