Please Advise! Would You Take the Russians’ Rubles?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

The U.S. Department of Justice recently indicted two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, for purportedly funnelling millions of dollars to social media personalities who then spread the Kremlin's message on YouTube and elsewhere. Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based company founded by Canadians Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan, has been identified as the conduit for this money.

How do you feel about Russia purchasing influencers?

Signed,

C. Nolan

Dear Chris,

Dr. Steve cannot feign outrage here — he has always operated on a pay-to-play basis. He is only chagrined by his own failure to get his share of those sweet rubles.

And it's not as if all that cash were going south of the border. The Department of Justice indictments may have focused on U.S. operations, but true to its Canadian roots, the owners of Tenet Media offered up plenty of homegrown content too.

Through both Tenet and a Canadian company called Roaming Millennial Inc., Chen and Donovan provided support to Rebel Media star Lauren Southern of Langley, B.C., who has distinguished herself by fawning over Russian extremists, promoting the “Great Replacement” theory, predicting race wars and even attempting to block search-and-rescue boats from going to the aid of African migrants.

In a statement posted to X, Southern pointed out that she has not been charged with any crime, describing her own videos as “original and thoughtful.” Rather like describing your host's chocolate quinoa cake as “unique and challenging.”

Money is money, though, and you don't look a gift лошадь in the mouth. Purveyors of Russian propaganda have often been referred to as “useful idiots,” but clearly that is no longer fair or accurate. The new generation of shills aren't idiots. They are entrepreneurs — rootin’, tootin’, Putin-lootin' privateers. No, these Kremlin mouthpieces are no fools. The real suckers are downstream.

In the Donald Trump era, almost all right-wing politics is a grift. Even if you believe every word of your own spittle-flecked rants, you still have to run some sort of con. That's just an expected part of the package now. Trump, history's greatest grifter, is the role model in all things. The new right-wing motto: Ask not what you can do for your country, but how you can get away with charging $399 for a pair of sneakers people will assume you bought at Spirit Halloween.

Not everybody is following the grifters playbook though, though. Elon Musk, for example. That Russian cash is right there for the taking but Musk is doing the job for free, voluntarily pumping out Trump/Russian propaganda targeted at people who think electric cars are the chariots of Satan. Thus the genius who paid $44 billion for Twitter and subsequently reduced revenues to the level of a mismanaged lemonade stand demonstrates once again his keen business acumen. On the other hand, no one can call you a sellout if you don't take money.

No such rube is Dr. Steve. He looks with envy upon the likes of dollar-spinning Tucker Carlson. The former Fox bloviator has certainly done well for himself, travelling to Moscow and describing the Putinesque paradise he found there. More recently Carlson has been promoting the views of Darryl Cooper, a man who probably thinks Raiders of the Lost Ark had a tragic ending. Cooper told Carlson and his audience that the main villain of the Second World War was Winston Churchill, and implied Hitler's greatest crime was poor planning.

Well, if that's where the money is, Dr. Steve is ready to sing from the Carlson songbook. Literally. Watch for Dr. Steve's new album, 22 Dynamic Hit(ler)s, featuring lively goose-steppers like “Stuka On You,” “Panzer My Call,” “In a Cosy Little Suicide Bunker with You” and “If I Can Overrun Western Europe in Six Weeks, Why Can't I Blitzkrieg Your Heart?”

Don't judge — Dr. Steve needs a new dacha. Anyway, it all contributes to our robust economy. Under a Pierre Poilievre government it will be do svidaniya, carbon tax, and hello, crypto-rubles.

Dr. Steve's new single, “Putin' on the Ritz,” drops soon.