‘Our Agent’: Russian State Media Steps Up for Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s legal woes in the US may be getting worse by the day, but at least he can count on Russian state media to go to bat for him. 

While the Kremlin hasn’t commented on the FBI raid upon his Mar-a-Lago estate, commentators and some government figures on state media have made their feelings very clear.

Describing Trump as “our agent” and a “Teflon man,” various pundits and commentators have expressed a mix of genuine concern, irony, and their trademark trolling. 

Earlier this month, FBI agents searched Trump’s Florida estate, recovering 11 sets of classified material, including some top-secret documents, from the home of the former US president. 

Trump blasted the FBI over the search, describing it as a “witch hunt” and claimed he’s being targeted because of his “dominance in all polls.” 

The Kremlin did not issue official comments on the search, but Trump is widely seen as Moscow’s political favourite candidate for the 2024 presidential election, and Russian state media have not been hiding its sympathies. Trump has suggested that Ukraine should have done a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to prevent Russia from invading the country.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova,  even made the extraordinary suggestion that the FBI searched Trump’s estate because of his position on gender identity.

Speaking last Sunday at Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, a political show on state TV, Zakharova remarked that ahead of the 2024 US presidential race Trump said there are only two genders – male and female. 

“He allowed himself to say only this, and practically immediately dozens of US intelligence agencies cars, dozens – approaching hundreds – of special agents, FBI, etc, raided his house, confiscated boxes with documents, and as you know, started to say that he broke an espionage law,” Zakharova said.

She also went on a bitter tirade linking the mindset of the US government to  a case of a Boston clinic offering gender affirmation surgeries to teenagers, describing it as “absurdity.” 

“The world has reached a very dangerous line: American surgeons in an official clinic in the city of Boston recorded a video about how they are ready to perform surgery on girls – not women! – to remove the uterus, based just on their desire to change gender. Can you imagine this? 

“And after this when we say that the political system of the United States is based on some democratic foundations, any normal person finds it laughable because the basic concepts are being perverted.”

A day earlier on her Telegram channel, Zakharova described Trump as “an oppositional Republican,” and claimed he is being accused of espionage upon the approval of the Democratic Party. “The dictatorship of liberalism has taken a decisive victory over democracy,” she wrote.

Russian state media has been closely following the Mar-a-Lago search and is up in arms about its possible repercussions. 

The relationship between the US and Russia has significantly deteriorated since Joe Biden came into office, and reached a low after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The US is now considering designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. 

“The deep state is taking revenge on Trump, using old tricks against him,” Valentin Bogdanov, VGTRK broadcaster’s New York bureau chief told the hosts of the 60 Minutes show on state news channel Rossiya 1. Commenting on US Attorney General Merrick Garland’s public statement on the Trump raid, he said the efforts came “from the depths of the Washington swamp,” and that “the story is way too outrageous for the American political tradition.”

He added that the 45th US president is feeling quite self-confident. “He is not afraid of any of it. He’s already been through all of it, so they can call him the agent of the Kremlin 10 times – but Donald Trump is a ‘Teflon man.’”

“Persecution of America’s main patriot” was the title of another episode of 60 Minutes, hosted by Olga Skabeeva and Evgeny Popov, who is also a deputy of Russia’s parliament, the Duma. “They want to kick Trump out from the presidential race a year and a half before it starts,” Valentin Bogdanov says in that episode.

A Rossiya 1 news report was also published with the title “FBI tarnishes its reputation by Trump estate raid”.

“There is no doubt whatsoever that the main goal of the people behind the search is to kick Trump out from the list of possible contenders for the US presidential office in 2024,” political expert Kirill Benediktov wrote for RT in Russian. 

“One can argue that all of that is just conspiracy theories. But America, where you cannot tell the FBI from the secret police of the Third Reich, where the Justice Department is acting as a cover-up for invisible puppeteers, and where a former president becomes a target of political persecution, is, unfortunately, not fiction, but reality.”

The recent reactions to the Trump estate raid from the Russian state media pundits once again reflect their long-standing sympathies with Trump and animosity toward Joe Biden, just like towards any other Democratic president. 

In March, Popov – the pundit who is also in the State Duma – argued that Biden should be removed from office and that Donald Trump, whom he described as a “partner” should return to the office. “It’s time for us, our people, to call on the people of the United States to change the regime in the US early, and to again help our partner, Trump, to become president.”