FRONTLINE Tells the Epic, Inside Story of “Putin’s Revenge”
Now, in a special, two-part documentary, Putin’s Revenge , FRONTLINE tells the epic, inside story of how Vladimir Putin came to see the United States as an enemy, how U.S. intelligence came to believe he targeted the 2016 presidential election, the fallout under President Obama and now in the Trump administration, and the implications for the future of American democracy.
“The Russians aren’t going to stop,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper tells FRONTLINE. “Their experience in our 2016 election is going to embolden them to interfere in the future, maybe more aggressively.”
Night one of Putin’s Revenge is a portrait of what makes the Russian leader tick, and the events that shaped his belief that the U.S. has sought to undermine Russia dating back to the fall of the Soviet Union. It explores how Putin came to power and then carefully constructed his image, cracking down on independent media outlets and opponents. It also traces key turning points in Putin’s relationship with the U.S. over the years, including how his fear of a U.S. policy of regime change intensified, and how he came to see Hillary Clinton in particular as an enemy trying to oust him – despite State Department insistence it was only promoting democracy, not trying to steer the outcome of Russia’s election.
Night two goes on to show Donald Trump’s repeated praise of Putin, how Russia is believed to have weaponized hacked emails to influence U.S. news cycles and exploit the gulf between Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’ supporters, and how false stories picked up by Russian propaganda websites were then promoted by Russian trolls and bots on social media, and eventually found their way onto mainstream American news broadcasts.
“What Putin was trying to do was to show that everyone’s lying, everyone’s cheating. There is no objective truth. And there is no difference between what you hear from Western media, and what you hear in, say, Russia’s media,” former Deputy National Security Advisor Antony Blinken tells FRONTLINE. “That was the line—and he became increasingly successful in blurring it for people, including in the United States and the West.”
This is a must watch series for anyone who cares about American democracy. How 50% of Republicans see Russia as a friend and ally just goes to show how successful Putin's revenge has been and how easily some in the west have been manipulated by him. The current Russian government is not our friend, they are determined to destroy western democracy now more than ever. Vladimir Putin is a liar, a despot and a murderer who has reinstituted the cold war with new weapons and if we don't wake up and realize this fact we will get stabbed in the back while he smiles at us from the front. Wake up America, the fantasy that the cold war with Russia is long over is just that, a fantasy, and we will only continue to lose ground if we don't realize this fact soon. Sadly we appear to have a President in office beholden to the murderous despot as Trump still refuses to say a negative word about Putin and has delayed the implementation of the bipartisan sanctions our congress and Senate have passed in overwhelming majorities.
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Wake up America, or you might not even notice the knife in our backs. Putin is an enemy determined to destroy us with new weapons from within. He knows an outright military war is not realistic so the Russian liar in Chief Vladimir Putin has attacked the very foundation of our nation in manipulating propaganda in a national election. Never before have we been victims of so many "false stories picked up by Russian propaganda websites were then promoted by Russian trolls and bots on social media, and eventually found their way onto mainstream American news broadcasts.". Putin has single handedly created the alternative media which uses doubt, subversion and lies to undermine facts and legitimate media. In his own country he simply arrested the owners of the media companies that weren't showing him in a good light and charged them with treason, letting them rot in prison till they turned over control of their media companies. Here in the US he had to use his absolute control of Russian media to sew distrust and propaganda which he knew would be picked up by conspiracy theorists and anti-Democratic media outlets in the west who already distrusted the political establishment. It's scary how successful he was and how so many Americans who were manipulated and continue to refuse to accept the fact that they got used.