President Obama has recently said that Donald Trump is nothing more than a puppet of Vladimir Putin. Larry King recently interviewed Donald Trump for Russia Today, Vladimir Putin’s media and propaganda arm, which has called into question if King was paid to do the interview, and how much money was he paid to do it.
In the past, Larry King was paid 225,000 dollars for an interview he did with the Prime Minister of Ukraine under the Party of Regions, Mykola Azarov. That interview, according to Serhiy Leshchenko, Ukrainian MP from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc parliamentary faction, made Larry King a huge sum of money, which was also paid out of the shadow funds that were recently released highlighting payments to Paul Manafort who helped to elect the former Party of Regions President Viktor Yanukovych.
Secret ledgers of disgraced Party of Regions show shadow payment to US journalist
Ukraine’s disgraced former ruling Party of Regions used its assets to pay Larry King, US’s renowned journalist. That’s according to Serhiy Leshchenko, Ukrainian MP from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc parliamentary faction.
“Money from the Party of Regions’ shadow assets was paid to Larry King. He received $225,000 from the party’s shadow coffer,” Leshchenko said at a press conference on Friday.
As reported by Interfax-Ukraine, editor-in-chief of the Internet online publication Ukrayinska Pravda Sevgil Musaieva-Borovyk said King had received those funds for an interview with the then Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov.
Secret ledgers of Ukraine’s disgraced former ruling Party of Regions show substantial amounts of cash listed for Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s current campaign manager. Manafort previously worked as a consultant for Ukraine’s ousted president Viktor Yanukovych. The New York Times reported the ledgers revealed some twelve point seven million US dollars in undisclosed cash payments designated for Manafort from 2007 to 2012.
Larry King has now backtracked on the interview saying that no one from Russia Today ever told him what to ask or what to say.
King insisted to Erin Burnett tonight that he has “never been told what to ask or not to ask” by Russia and he has never had anything critical of Russia and Putin edited out of his show.
Donald Tump has claimed that he thought he was doing a podcast with King and not a show on Russia Today.
As for the interview itself, Team Trump claims that they thought it was an interview for King’s podcast and not his show on RT. King didn’t exactly find that very believable.
But this still leaves open many questions into how journalists are paid to cover a specific subject, and whether or not they give glowing interviews filled with puff piece styled journalism to candidates for back end payments. In actuality its a common practice for shady or has been fringe journalists to get paid for giving positive coverage to those that pay them. Joshua Trevino was one such writer who was paid by the Malaysian government to produce what he terms low level PR work for them. Of course that positive spin was also produced in all the mainstream publications.
Conservative commentator Joshua Treviño admitted today that he’s spent years doing down-low PR work for the government of Malaysia, and received $389,724.70 for the trouble. Some of that, but not most, was paid to writers who wrote negative pieces about the country’s opposition leader for the likes of the Huffington Post, National Review, and RedState.
As it is alleged by Interfax Ukraine, Larry King was paid a huge sum of money to do an interview that gave the Party of Regions a boost, not only in Ukrainian politics, but in American politics as well.. It was nothing more than Russian spin however, and King appears to have been paid the big bucks to do it, thus giving even more credence to the pay for play or pay for spin that has rocked journalism over the past few years.
Another pay for spin operation is Breitbart News, which is funded by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who is also Trump’s main money man. Trump receives nothing but A Number One Duke of New York positive spin on Breitbart News. Stephen Bannon, Chairman of Breitbart News, also was recently tapped to take over the Trump campaign messaging platform, which now shows just how deeply corrupted media organizations have become when it comes to covering those that pay them.
So, just how much money was Larry King paid? It’s not really a question of whether he was paid or not, if King took money before from the media arm of Vladimir Putin to give positive spin to the Party of Regions, then it stands to reason he took money from RT to interview Donald Trump to give him, Russia, and Vladimir Putin positive spin as well. You don’t just take huge sums of money once and never again. Its a standard that is just coming to light that journalists are getting paid to promote whomever pays them to promote their agendas.
In this particular interview, Trump was asked about what he thought about Russia destabilizing US elections by hacking the DNC and various other hacks that have recently been coming out. Trump denied any such thing was going on with Russia or Putin. He then went on to use the accuse the accusers meme by claiming that Democrats were behind the hacks.
In the interview, Trump cast doubt on reports that Russian intelligence has a covert plan to create distrust in the upcoming American presidential elections.
‘I don’t know. I’ve been hearing about it. I’ve been reading about it. I think it’s probably unlikely,’ Trump told Larry King on Russia Today, the Russian-backed news service.
‘I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out, who knows? I think that it’s pretty unlikely, but who knows. I hope that if they are doing something I hope that somebody’s going to be able to find out so that they can end it, because that would not be appropriate at all,’ Trump said.
Larry King shot back after questions about the interview by saying that Trump was always booked on King’s show. And that neither he or his production companies were owned by Russia Today, nor were there any quid pro quo arrangements going on. King claimed that RT was licensed to produce King’s shows, and that it was all some sort of mix up in how it was produced.
“PoliticKING with Larry King and Larry King Now are produced and owned entirely by Ora Media, LLC., who are solely responsible for its editorial direction,” the statement read. “RT America is one of several dozen companies who license these and other Ora programs for distribution around the world. A visit to www.Ora.tv will provide several examples of our content. Larry King is a part owner in and employee of Ora Media, LLC. and neither he nor his producers are employed by RT America. Mr. Trump was always booked on ‘PoliticKING with Larry King’ for Ora TV.”
https://youtu.be/VnL4oeHf8Xw
One thing is for sure, readers need to pay attention to hidden agendas at various media arms that are giving positive spin to Donald Trump. If they are greasing his wheels, then one can almost rest assured that someone is getting paid huge sums of money to buy the grease and apply it.
Great article. Good to see you connecting the dots. It is true that reporters who work for Russia Today are paid, sometimes big sums, to do a propaganda interview. This is Paul Manafort at his best. My advice to your American readers, don’t believe one thing that comes out of Donald Trump’s mouth–everything is staged to manipulate. Also, don’t believe the bunk about Manafort leaving the Trump campaign. That is all straight out of the Kremlin playbook, remove the lightening rod and then have him pull the strings from behind the curtain. In fact, this is what Putin himself did when he put Dmitry Medvedev in as President from 2008 through 2012. Putin was pulling the strings that whole time. Manafort is still doing the same.
But Manafort has some problems of his own–there are people in Ukraine and Russia that he screwed over and they have already leaked documents to the US Department of Justice that could end his career forever. His only hope is getting Trump in office and killing the investigation.
In the coming weeks, I will lay out what Russia plans to do with regard to the US election–hint, hint, look at what Russia did between 2004 and 2014 in Ukraine. Russia always uses Ukraine as its testing ground if it can, and it was pretty successful in Ukraine, but it also got caught several times. My job on this site over the next two months is to advise and inform so US officials can prepare for the chaos that Russia and its hackers intend to unleash on the 2016 election.