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We reveal how Russian media, targeting international audiences, manipulates the topic of the debates between the U.S. presidential candidates.
On the morning (Kyiv time) of September 11, the ABC network aired a debate between current U.S. presidential candidates—former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris. The election itself is scheduled for November 5.
Following the previous debate between current U.S. President Joe Biden and Trump on CNN on June 27, Biden, under pressure from media, donors, and party members, withdrew from the race in favor of Vice President Harris. Prior to the current debate, various polls showed nearly even results for the candidates on a nationwide scale, within the margin of error, with Harris having a slight advantage in key swing states. Swing states are those where both parties have won in recent decades, unlike most states, which vote predictably. According to a poll by The New York Times and Siena College, about 5% of Americans remain undecided.
During the debate, the candidates discussed economic policy, abortion rights, illegal immigration, the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot by Trump supporters, healthcare, climate change, and racism. On international issues, they touched on the war between Israel and Hamas and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Russia-Ukraine war was also a topic of discussion. Trump twice dodged a direct question about whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war, stating only that he wanted the war to end as soon as possible. He reiterated his claim that the war would not have happened under his leadership and would end within 24 hours of his victory, thanks to his calls to Putin and Zelenskyy.
Harris responded by saying that within 24 hours, Trump would “just give it up” (referring to Ukraine) and added that under Trump, Putin would already be in Kyiv. Trump also mentioned Putin’s possession of nuclear weapons and suggested that “Biden’s administration is leading the world toward World War III.” He repeated his claim that Europe is not helping Ukraine as much as the U.S., although data from The Kiel Institute, which monitors such aid, shows otherwise. Specifically, from late January 2022 (just before Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022) to June 2024, the European Union and individual European countries have provided about $207 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, compared to approximately $109 billion provided by the U.S.
During the debate, Harris emphasized the importance of defending international law and U.S. allies in Europe, claiming credit for building a coalition to support Ukraine. Her rhetoric on this issue mirrored Biden’s.
For more details on the September 11 debate, read Detector Media’s full article here.
According to CNN, 63% of viewers polled found Harris’s performance to be stronger compared to 37% for Trump. A Washington Post focus group of voters from swing states also showed a shift in favor of Harris. Even the pro-Republican media outlet Fox News acknowledged a potential positive trend for Harris following the debate while noting that the full impact would likely become apparent in the polls in the coming weeks. The network also published several pieces suggesting that ABC debate moderators were biased in favor of Harris.
“Meaningless and Pro-War”
In Russian propaganda media aimed at international audiences, the general tone was one of dismissing the debates as a “meaningless political show” that only highlighted the flaws in the U.S. political system. Accordingly, Harris’s victory, as reflected in poll results, was downplayed and labeled a “victory in meaninglessness.”
RT ran an article titled: “The US Presidential Debate Was a Degenerate Political Show, and Harris Won.” At the beginning of the article, a rhetorical question was posed: “In a political culture where rational arguments hardly get you anywhere, what’s the value of a rhetorical square-off?” The article’s regular contributor, Graham Hryce, wrote that debates have rarely influenced election outcomes in the past, and today they are a “quaint relic from a bygone era” when rational arguments still mattered. Hryce described the current U.S. political culture as uniquely characterized by “magical thinking,” where opponents are viewed as embodiments of evil, posing an existential threat. Trump, according to Hryce, is portrayed as a celebrity-politician who contributed to erasing rationality from American politics, turning it into “a tawdry and debauched branch of celebrity culture.” Hryce suggested that while the debates slightly increased Harris’s chances of winning, Trump is “both cause and symptom of the decline of the American Republic.”
This criticism of U.S. political culture appeared on an outlet owned by a government, whose leader has been in power for over a quarter-century, having “won” five presidential campaigns without ever participating in public political debates. At the same time, that country has seen multiple instances of assassinations or attempts on opposition politicians, such as the 2015 murder of Boris Nemtsov and the 2020 poisoning attempt on Alexei Navalny, followed by his death in prison in 2024.
Another Russian outlet, Sputnik, traditionally relied on marginal Western “analysts” and “activists” to voice Kremlin propaganda to Western audiences. For example, in one article, opinions on the debates were given by Larry Johnson, who worked briefly as a CIA analyst in the early 1990s and still uses this credential as his primary claim to expertise. He once published in U.S. media, including a New York Times column on July 10, 2001, where he downplayed the threat of terrorism just two months before the 9/11 attacks. Later, Johnson moved to fringe media platforms, where he spread disinformation on numerous occassions.
In a comment for Sputnik, Johnson lamented that there is currently no room in the U.S. for an opposition politician “to make the case that we need to talk to Russia, that we need to deal with Russia as adults and have mutual respect.” According to Johnson, the debates revealed a critical lack of such a position.
“The only possible change in policy is if Trump is elected and there will be an effort to stop the war. If it’s the Democrats, then the war will continue. Well, it continues for one good reason — it’s making people a lot of money. If you look at the stock prices of Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, they’ve doubled and tripled in some cases since the start of the special military operation. So we’re talking literally billions, tens of billions of dollars that are being made,” Johnson wrote.
While calling for U.S. presidential candidates to stop the war, Johnson conveniently ignored the fact that the war itself — referred to in Russia as a “special military operation” and which supposedly boosts American company stock prices — was initiated by Russian leadership.
Johnson called the debates meaningless in the current U.S. information context, “the notion, number one, that there’s an undecided voter out there who was unaware of the positions of Donald Trump or the positions of Kamala Harris is just I think ridiculous. Most people’s minds are made up.”
However, a New York Times poll conducted before the debates indicated that 28% of respondents wanted to learn more about Harris, while 9% were curious about Trump. Approximately 5% remained undecided on their choice for president.
Johnson also deemed the debates biased against Trump, claiming that he had to debate not just Harris but also “biased media ‘fact-checking’” who allegedly sided with Harris. He argued that the debates would not shift candidate support but might help justify a “fabricated victory” for Harris.
“[They are] registering literally millions of illegal migrants that have come into the United States who are not citizens but nonetheless are being signed up to vote. If those votes end up counting in any form or fashion, it could affect the outcome of the election,” Johnson speculated, spreading disinformation about non-citizens voting, thereby preemptively casting doubt on the legitimacy of the election results.
In another piece, Sputnik also featured comments from U.S. citizen Craig Pasta Jardula, presented as a political analyst. On other platforms, Jardula describes himself as an anti-war activist, but he has a history of spreading disinformation. In his Sputnik commentary, he even managed to promote a conspiracy theory, citing “a lot of people who feel that,” suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were “an inside job because it allowed us to open up the door and go into the Middle East and set it on fire.”
Jardula offered his version of the winners of the Trump-Harris debate:
“You know, the only winners last night were the donors, the military industrial complex, the bankers, big pharma, and, of course, the Zionists. The losers last night, unfortunately, were the American people.”
Jardula expressed disappointment with both Trump and Harris. He criticized Trump for abandoning anti-NATO rhetoric:
“We had thought there was a chance that this guy would disband and get rid of NATO.”
Harris was accused of attacking Trump’s best initiatives, such as his attempts to broker peace with North Korea.
“She’s a warmonger to the nines. There’s no sign of ending the war in the Ukraine. She’s all for it. And she’s still using that same tagline again. If we don’t stop Putin now, he’s going to go into Poland. People don’t believe that. They’re tired of this. They’re done with this,” Jardula said.
Trump’s Victory or a Draw Favoring Trump
The Russian-language branch of RT also covered the debates and took a pro-Trump stance. RT formally declared the outcome a draw, although this contradicted polling and the opinions of most Western analysts. “Experts interviewed by RT concluded that there was no clear leader during the debate,” the RT report stated.
One of RT’s commentators attributed Trump’s less-than-convincing performance to the bias of the moderators, “Trump had to debate not only Harris but also the moderators, which made it difficult.”
In another story, RT summarized the comments of international media about the allegedly “obvious to everyone” bias of the moderators, “The moderators openly supported the vice president, foreign media say.”
Harris’s performance, which was on par with Trump’s, was framed as an anomaly:
“Indeed, this was probably one of Kamala Harris’s first major public appearances where she didn’t embarrass herself. She can still speak without a teleprompter sometimes. However, even here, of course, we saw that she relied heavily on rehearsed phrases and expressions, that is, she performed according to a certain script.” Due to Harris’s overall weakness, the debate could be interpreted as a victory for her, RT suggested. “Neither candidate had a clear victory. Although this is probably good news for Kamala Harris, because everyone was afraid that she would make mistakes, misspeak, or blurt out some painful gaffes. But this did not happen.”
Another RT observer argued that Trump performed better than Harris in appealing to voters in swing states, supposedly due to his moderate rhetoric, “There, Trump will be able to win more likely as a more moderate centrist politician against the absolutely lackluster Harris. If Trump manages to outperform Harris even slightly in these states, and there are grounds for that, he will win. So these debates showed that the eccentric Trump is moving towards working with the audience from the contested states, adhering to moderate rhetoric for this purpose.”
In a separate article, RT even featured an analysis from a “body language and lie expert” who supposedly saw “convincing consistency of gestures and words” in Trump. Meanwhile, Harris allegedly showed “more hesitant movements, that is, signs of stress, excitement, throat clearing, lip pressing, and licking.”
The “expert” also hinted at alleged deceit from Harris when she mentioned President Biden, “Here, he triggered something very strong and stressful for her; there was a noticeable throat clearing and a distinct pulling back of her left hand. She knows something about Biden... Then there’s the dissatisfaction where Biden is referred to as a dog. There’s some interesting topic there about what Kamala knows about Biden and where he is now,” the outlet indulged in conspiracy theories suggesting Biden had been forcibly removed from power by Democratic Party officials.
RT did not forget to mention a separate comment from Trump supporter and businessman Elon Musk, who also complained about the bias of the moderators and stated that Harris exceeded expectations. At the same time, Musk believes that in practical matters, not just rhetoric, Trump will prove to be the better candidate.
Senators of the Russian Federation Council were among the other commentators on the debate for RT’s Russian-language version. First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council’s Committee on International Affairs Vladimir Dzhabarov saw Trump’s victory in the debate. But Harris, in his opinion, was not “crushed.”
“In general, Kamala Harris did not fail. Although she didn’t demonstrate any special expertise in foreign policy, Trump clearly outplayed her.”
Senator Olga Kovitidi remarked that all the topics discussed during the debates were merely a “smokescreen” hiding the real intention of the American political establishment — to wage war.
“It is obvious that Harris’s home-made preparations and Trump’s usual improvisations cannot hide the true mood of the American political elite — war. America is systematically involved in the war in Ukraine, as openly stated by Harris, who recognized the presence of American funding and American mercenaries in Ukraine.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, called the debates a “show performed by people who clearly bear no responsibility for their words” during a broadcast on Radio Sputnik.
A separate topic in Russian state media was the number of times Putin was mentioned during the debates. Both RIA Novosti and RT counted 12 mentions of the Russian leader’s name [we confirm that the candidates mentioned Putin’s name 12 times, with the moderators mentioning it six more times — DM]. An “analyst” cited by RT saw this as “further confirmation that Russia is a great power.” According to the analyst, Trump is a proponent of normalizing relations with Russia and favors withdrawing support for Ukraine, while Harris is a supporter of defending the Euro-Atlantic community from a “hostile, aggressive” Russia. “Whether one loves or hates Russia, the fact remains that people think about it and don’t forget it,” the analyst concluded.
In early September, Putin, in a sarcastic manner, referred to Harris as Russia’s “favorite” in the U.S. elections, a remark that Trump himself mentioned during the debates. However, Russian propaganda leaves little doubt about the Kremlin’s true hopes, as they would likely be eager to take a call from Trump within 24 hours of his potential victory.
The main focus of the Kremlin’s international propaganda machine was to downplay the significance of the debates. This indirectly reveals Moscow’s disdain for any democratic processes, which Russian voters are evidently deprived of. While the U.S. political culture is indeed characterized by large, entrenched partisan bases whose opinions are difficult to change, election outcomes are decided in seven swing states by a small percentage of undecided voters. Therefore, seeing the impact of the debates on national polling trends may not be easy.
However, this does not mean the debates are insignificant. On the contrary, few events can rival the ability of a major debate to shift electoral support in swing states by fractions of a percentage point, which can prove decisive. This is why the candidates’ campaign teams debated the format of the event for so long, and why the process draws the attention of global media.
According to the latest New York Times polls, Harris is leading Trump by a few percentage points in three of the seven swing states, slightly trailing in one, and tied in the remaining three. The Washington Post reports Harris leading in three states, Trump in two, and a tie in the other two. Thus, the race remains tight, and the extraordinary importance of this election for Ukraine cannot be overstated.
Main page illustration by Nataliya Lobach
