More Americans watch RT than CNN – former US intel chief

The Russian outlet has been facing censorship and legal hurdles in the country since 2017

RT has a larger American audience than CNN, former US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has claimed. Clapper was a key figure behind the Russiagate conspiracy theory, which included claims that RT helped influence the election of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Earlier this month, Clapper’s successor Tulsi Gabbard declassified a trove of Obama-era documents which reportedly detail efforts by the two-time US president and his senior officials to distort intelligence on unsubstantiated claims Moscow interfered in the 2016 US election.

In an interview with CNN aired last week, Clapper doubled down on the conspiracy and accused Russia of unleashing “a very sophisticated, extensive and aggressive information operations campaign to influence public opinion” in the US.

”RT… has a bigger following in this country than this network [CNN] does” while accusing it of using what he described as “fake news implants,” he said.

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Clapper claimed that the alleged Russian campaign was aimed at “sow[ing] doubt, discord and distrust among the American public.”

RT has faced increasing censorship and legal hurdles in the US since 2017, when the Department of Justice required RT America to register as a “foreign agent.” 

The RT America channel was then denied congressional press credentials before being forced to close down in 2022 following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict and the West’s decision to impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia.

RT content was later restricted and deleted from major digital platforms, including YouTube, where the network had ratcheted up some 5 billion views and several million subscribers, and Facebook.

Last year, the US also indicted two Russians, identified as RT employees, with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), money laundering, and illegally funneling millions of dollars to US-based entities to covertly influence US audiences.

Separately, the US sanctioned RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and other senior RT employees, over alleged efforts to influence the US election.

Moscow has denounced the crackdown, calling it a testament to the degradation of US democracy and “its transformation into a totalitarian neoliberal dictatorship.”