Russian media celebrates future US President Trump
MOSCOW – Russian state television channels are reveling in the victory of US president-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to improve ties with Russia and publicly praised the country’s globally controversial leader, Vladimir Putin.
State-run news network Russia-24 had wall-to-wall coverage of the US election day, culminating with correspondents in New York covering the long celebrations at Trump’s headquarters as much as the teary-eyed faces at Clinton’s.
On the eve of the election, Russian media hedged for a widely predicted victory by Trump’s opponent, former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, with pieces backing up Trump’s views that the election would be rigged.
A talk show portrayed Clinton as a warmonger, with a debate on the probability of confrontation over Syria escalating into World War III, a popular topic on various channels over the past week.
Russia’s state-funded English-language news network RT focused on allegations of vote-rigging, while the Defense Ministry’s TV channel, Zvezda (“Star”), ran a piece about the US political establishment’s potential motivation to assassinate Trump.
A prominent Russian opposition politician, Dmitry Gudkov, rapped the extensiveness of the state media’s coverage of the foreign election.
“There’s a countdown live on Russia-24 until the end of the US election. Correct me if I’m wrong, but no Russian election has ever had this sort of thing,” Gudkov wrote on his Facebook page.
Political analyst Mikhail Troitskiy said the Russian TV media was seeking “to compensate for the absence of a serious political struggle in the recent Russian parliamentary election.”
The presidential campaign in Russia’s geopolitical rival was portrayed as “dirty” and “clownish,” Troitskiy said in emailed comments.
However, Trump has made some serious promises to benefit Russia, including to normalize relations with Moscow, recognize Crimea as Russian territory and end U.S. sanctions, Troitskiy added.
“Many in the Russian policymaking community sincerely believe that a Trump administration would be amenable to resetting and improving the US-Russia relationship,” Troitskiy said.
Putin was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Trump on his victory, saying he hoped to “bring US-Russian relations out of their state of crisis,” according to a Kremlin statement.
Putin, who enjoys extraordinary popular support in his country, and Trump, who narrowly won the election, have openly praised each other previously. Putin has famously described Trump as talented, and Trump responded in kind, calling Putin a strong leader.
Not since the Cold War had Russia been such a focus of a U.S. presidential election, especially because of Russia’s presumed hacking of Democratic National Committee emails.
The hack exposed party efforts to undermine Clinton’s rival in the run-up to the presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders, and was a boon for Trump.
Clinton responded by trying to cast Trump as having an allegiance to Putin, whereas Trump has maintained that improving ties with Russia would benefit global security.