Putin Mouthpieces Turn on Trump, Revealing the Transactional Nature of Propaganda

Russian state media and pro-Kremlin commentators once warmly welcomed President Donald Trump’s move into the Oval Office. They praised his anti-establishment rhetoric, his calls to withdraw from NATO, and his admiration for Vladimir Putin, viewing him as a disruptor of Western unity and a useful counterweight to traditional democratic norms.

But this week, that tone changed dramatically. In response to Trump’s announcement of new defensive and offensive weapons for Ukraine, his threats to impose steep tariffs on Moscow and its trading partners, and his vow to “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow” if Russia attacks a NATO ally, the Kremlin’s media machine has turned on him. The same figure once hailed as an ally is now being publicly ridiculed, demonstrating how authoritarian propaganda knows no loyalty, only opportunism.

Following Trump’s re-election, former Florida deputy sheriff and fugitive turned Moscow-based Kremlin propagandist John Mark Dougan — whose comments are a useful gauge of where Kremlin narratives are headed — shared a video of himself running through the streets of Moscow at dawn celebrating. His exuberance made the enthusiasm of the most avid MAGA fan at a Trump campaign rally pale by comparison.

This week, Dougan responded to an X post from conservative commentator Tucker Carlson asking if people still support Trump. Dougan said on July 13, “Not anymore. He’s an idiot.” Responding to an X post from another user, Dougan said, “I think Trump has moved away from MAGA and is in bed with the warmongering neocons.” On July 15, Dougan wrote on X, “Iran should launch a strike on the @realDonaldTrump’s white house and Mar a Lago. You know, make them feel the pain. Hey Trump, you’re a real warmongering NATO shill a***hole. I hope Iran gets lucky.”

NewsGuard contacted Dougan in a July 15 direct message on X to ask about his shift in views on Trump. Dougan said in a return message, “Trump ran as a peace maker, it would be dishonest if he became a warmonger.”

As a reminder, Dougan operated a network of 167 fake local news sites ahead of the U.S. 2024 election advancing false claims about Trump’s Democratic opponent and then-Vice President Kamala Harris. His influence operations have long echoed Russian talking points, including fabricated attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as corrupt, making his reversal on Trump especially telling, even as Kremlin officials insist they’re unfazed by Trump’s recent threats.

From July 8 to July 15, other Kremlin mouthpieces issued similar criticisms. For example, Moscow-based tabloid Moskovskij Komsomolets stated that “[Trump] has delusions of grandeur and a very big mouth.” On state TV, Moscow-based professor Dmitry Evstafiev described Trump as a “severely wounded hog.” Kremlin propagandist Alexander Kots called Trump an “old narcissist.” State TV host Vladimir Solovyov said that “Trump has started to speak rudely,” and that he’s “transform[ing] into another version of Biden.”

This shift in their rhetoric from the same propagandists who once fawned over Trump — who, himself, is known for his transactional approach to policy and people — serves as a case study in the transactional nature of authoritarian propaganda: When they viewed Trump as undermining Western cohesion and support for Ukraine, he was elevated. Now that he’s threatening Russia’s economy and military posture, he’s expendable.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean the Kremlin is now siding with Democrats, or that it’s changed its broader playbook. Rather, it’s a familiar move in Russia’s information strategy: Amplify anyone who serves the moment. Discard them when they no longer do.

Indeed, this isn’t the first time Russian state media has turned on Trump. In March 2017, months after helping fuel his rise with overwhelmingly favorable coverage and pro-Trump influence operations during the 2016 election, Kremlin media abruptly shifted tone. Despite Trump maintaining an overtly pro-Russia stance at the time, state media began portraying his presidency as chaotic and divisive. RT ran a headline asking, “Are Trump’s policies dividing America more than ever?” The shift wasn’t prompted by any reversal in Trump’s posture toward Russia, but rather by the U.S. political dysfunction gripping his first weeks in office, which hostile foreign actors were eager to exploit.

At the time, experts said that the shift in Russian state media served as a reminder that the Kremlin’s primary goal is to undermine U.S. democracy, regardless of who is in the White House. In a March 2017 column, then-Vanity Fair columnist Peter Savodnik captured the underlying dynamic that holds today: “None of this happened accidentally. It happened because in Russia, the media, like democracy, is ‘managed.’ There may be some free thought, but it’s only free if it doesn’t really matter.”

Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before Russian media will begin targeting Trump with outright false claims — the same way it has smeared Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron with claims of corruption. Will Dougan next claim that Melania Trump went on a $1 million shopping spree at Cartier in New York with taxpayer funds, just as he fabricated the same claim against Zelensky’s wife? Or perhaps Trump will change his tune on Russia and once again find himself in the good graces of Moscow’s propagandists.

Either way, Trump’s rise and fall in Russian state media says less about him, and more about how the Kremlin’s propaganda machine operates. In Russia’s information war, figures like Trump are never allies but rather assets who are useful when convenient and discarded when not.

McKenzie Sadeghi is the AI and Foreign Influence Editor at NewsGuard.

We launched Reality Check after seeing how much interest there is in our work beyond the business and tech communities that we serve. Subscribe to this newsletter to support our apolitical mission to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies. Have feedback? Send us an email: realitycheck@newsguardtech.com.

Share NewsGuard’s Reality Check