136. How Russia Made Trump: Putin’s Troll Factory (Ep 5)

The Rest Is Classified

Goalhanger

History

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Russian trolls are trying to influence the 2016 US election, but did Putin's keyboard warriors really propel Donald Trump into the White House? In the penultimate episode in their series on how the Russians hacked the 2016 US presidential election, David and Gordon return to the sordid tale of Yevgeny Prigozhin: restaurateur and Russian troll farmer. ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ ⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified⁠⁠ Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee ------------------- Email: therestisclassified@goalhanger.com Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series,
0:09.0	first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books.
0:13.1	Join the declassified club at the the 2016 U.S. election. So did Putin's keyboard warriors
0:31.8	really propel Donald Trump into the White House? Well, welcome to the rest is classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.
0:38.3	And I'm David McCloskey. And David, in our last few episodes, we've been looking at the
0:42.8	Russian active measures, the influence campaign against the 2016 US presidential election,
0:49.9	particularly, I guess, focusing on one aspect of it. The GRU, Russian military intelligence,
0:56.2	this hack of emails, and then their leak through the summer of 2016 onto the internet
1:02.9	and the questions about how the US was going to respond. But that wasn't all that was going on,
1:08.5	was it? No, there was another plank, Gordon, in this active measure, another sciop that was
1:14.1	focused on disinformation and in particular spreading disinformation on social media.
1:20.0	It was led, Gordon, by friend of the pod, Yevgeny Progoshin, chef turned warlord, and
1:27.4	we did a series on him last year in late 2025.
1:32.0	And we made the comparison, Gordon, that Yevgeny Progoshin is really what would have become of Chef Gordon Ramsey.
1:39.3	Had Mr. Ramsey been brought up in sort of the twilight years of the Soviet Union and had been
1:44.3	pulled into Vladimir Putin's orbit.
1:46.0	And then gone to lead a mercenary group and lead a march against his own government
1:51.5	with a bunch of mercenaries before being blown up an airplane.
1:54.6	So the analogy doesn't entirely work.
1:57.0	I think there are points at which that the chef analogy breaks down.
2:01.1	But there are some relevant points to it, I think.
2:04.7	But let's be honest, they're limited.
	...

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