Never before has a foreign power achieved such deep infiltration – from the Republican president to a Democratic candidate to a Fox News host to Netflix, everyone in America is a Russian stooge now. Here is the definitive ranking.

Tucker Carlson

Who? Floppy-haired Fox News host.

Earned his GRU stripes… Last April, when he questioned if the Syrian government really did use chemical weapons on the rebels in Douma, saying “we should be skeptical of this, starting with the poison gas attack itself.” He has since been at least part-vindicated.

Busted!“Perhaps Carlson and those like him are attempting to incept in the president’s imagination the notion that Moscow has America’s best interests in mind. Why else would ostensibly patriotic American opinion-makers disseminate Russian propaganda if it wasn’t to advance a particular political agenda? That only raises the question: Who’s really in charge here?” Noah Rothman in an article called 'Inception of a Russian Stooge'.

Stooginess: 4/10 Inceptional stooge, not an exceptional one. Needs to go a level deeper.

Netflix

Who? Ice-axed Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, who has been dead for 79 years, or rather the Russian-made show about him, now available on Netflix.

Earned its GRU stripes… By allowing the broadcast of a miniseries that shows that not all coups end well, or bloodlessly.

Also on rt.com Collusion & chill: WaPo unmasks everyone’s favorite streaming service as a stooge for Russia

Busted!“‘Trotsky’ unmistakably aligns with the Kremlin worldview. The show is taking contemporary Russia’s anti-revolutionary ideology global. RT is not CNN. The 2016 Facebook memes from the Internet Research Agency were not ordinary social media content. ‘Trotsky’ is not merely another Netflix show. Audiences should know what they’re watching. And Netflix should think carefully about whether it wants to be in business, however indirectly, with Russia’s propaganda channels,” the Washington Post in an article titled 'You might be binge-watching Russian propaganda on Netflix'.

Stooginess: 3/10 Playing the long game. Possibly the long dead game.

John Bolton

Who? John Bolton, Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor. Didn’t expect to see him here, did you?

Earned his GRU stripes… As an archetypal Cold War hawk during the Reagan administration, who has dedicated his life to fighting communism around the globe, and has just driven the US out of the INF Treaty, much to Russia’s consternation. Wait, this makes no sense at all.

Also on rt.com Super-hawk John Bolton and ‘Agent Butina’ connection is the Democrats’ new Russiagate target

Busted! According to House Democrats, Bolton “worked directly with a Russian citizen who has now been charged by federal prosecutors with infiltrating [the NRA] and spying against the United States for years” – Maria Butina, with whom he appears to have once shared a table at a gun rights meeting – and these “alarming and unprecedented” revelations could disqualify him from being privy to confidential affairs of state.

Stooginess: -1917/10.

Tulsi Gabbard

Who? Former Iraq vet turned Samoan-American Hawaii congresswoman turned outside candidate running for the Democrat presidential nomination.

Earned her GRU stripes… Or didn’t. Gabbard was merely anointed as Moscow’s preferred 2020 candidate, by NBC on the basis of data collected by a centrist Democrat tech outfit that had previously been caught creating fake Russian trolls. She did, however, meet Bashar Assad once face-to-face.

Also on rt.com ‘Neocon warmongers’: NBC slammed for drawing on dodgy Russiagate org in Gabbard smear

Busted!“Several experts who track websites and social media linked to the Kremlin have also seen what they believe may be the first stirrings of an upcoming Russian campaign of support for Gabbard,” from NBC article 'Russia's propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard'.

Stooginess: 5+2/10 Taking all her flights to Moscow via Damascus. And she supports Bernie Sanders too, so gets a couple of his points.

Donald Trump

Who? Putin-loving, orange-faced, fake-haired, racist, sexist, illiterate, water-sipping, overweight, demented, bankrupt, tenant-evicting… (goes on for half an hour).

Earned his GRU stripes… When he went over to stage the Miss Universe contest in Russia? Or when he agreed to build that Trump Tower that he never agreed to build? After being blackmailed with spy camera footage in a hotel room during a bout of water sports in what definitely wasn’t just a made-up story? Or when he didn’t devour Vladimir Putin after tricking him to jump into a giant pot of boiling oil when they met at the G20? Who even remembers when or why any of this started, though with the Mueller report imminent, soon we’ll know, and will never have talk about it again, right? RIGHT?

Also on rt.com How the Russiagate investigation is Sovietizing American politics (by Stephen Cohen)

Busted! Type in “Trump + 'Russian stooge'” into Google, get 21,300 results, take your own pick.

Stooginess: Elevendred/10 - see he doesn’t even know how to count, the xenophobic, small-handed, burger-munching, Twitter-ranting, Executive Time-abusing… (please stop.)

Igor Ogorodnev