He's here. He says he's downstairs. He just left me a voice message on WhatsApp.

I'm at the desk. He's at the desk.

From the New York Times, I'm not Michael Barbaro. I'm Kevin Ruth. This is the daily.

This is a bad idea. Bringing a possible Russian troll into the New York Times building.

I've had some questions myself about how to slice this. Probably a bad idea.

It's Thursday, November 1st.

So, for the past two years, since the 2016 election, I've been kind of obsessed with this idea of Russian interference and Russian Internet trolls.

Russian Internet trolls use social media during the 2016 presidential election.

Paid Internet provocateurs distorting the US political debate.

And as I've been looking into this, I came across something pretty interesting and kind of bizarre.

Earlier this year, the Federal News Agency of Russia, which is basically sort of the parent company of the troll farms that interfered in the 2016 election,

they sent out a press release. And they were basically announcing that they were starting a new media project for Americans called Wake Up America.

And the reason for it, according to them, was so that Americans would get real, uncensored news from Russia.

So, the flagship website of this new media project is called USA Really.

And it's essentially a collection of stories, news articles, opinion articles.

And the theme that runs through all of them is this kind of dark and dysfunctional picture of America.

Grocery store shooting leaves too dead in Kentucky, many more in shock.

They post a lot of stories about gruesome and violent rapists given pass by Alaska Court.

Violent and broken things happening in the US.

The scourge of drug addiction is spreading over the US.

And if you just stumbled onto this site, if someone sent you an article and you clicked around a little bit,

you wouldn't necessarily find any trace that this is owned and operated by Russians.

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