There’s a thin line between advanced propaganda and pure silliness. The tone and the content have to match. When they don’t, even the Kremlin’s veteran lie spinners can make fools of themselves.

Meet Tara Reade, a 60-year-old former Joe Biden assistant who defected to Russia saying her life was at risk. She’d made allegations of sexual misconduct by the President in the 1990s. These were contested by Biden staffers.

On the October 20 edition of the program New Russian Sensations, she was introduced as “Madam Tara Reade, Biden’s runaway aide who managed to reach Russia, along with sticky secrets from the White House.” Portentously, an unidentified NTV narrator declaimed, “Hurricane Tara will be more dangerous to Biden than Hurricane Milton.”

Well perhaps. But Reade is not new to the propaganda carousel, as regular Russian TV viewers will remember. In May last year, she appeared alongside the notorious Maria Butina (who was convicted in the US but says “I wasn’t a spy”) to announce that she had defected to Russia and asked Putin for Russian citizenship. According to the documentary, Butina and the head of RT Margarita Simonyan had aided her departure from the US. Reade now works for the propaganda channel RT and proudly keeps a photograph taken in 1992  — the year when she went to work for Biden — on her work computer.

Reade admitted that by going public with her allegations against Biden she was hoping to derail his presidential bid in 2020, but claimed Congressman Matt Gaetz — described by the host as Reade’s “influential friend” — dissuaded her from testifying before Congress by saying that he was concerned about her safety.

Now that Biden is no longer running for re-election, Reade is taking swipes at Vice President Kamala Harris. In the documentary, she said that her plan was to become a Senator, but that Biden ruined her life and political future.

The voiceover returned to announce: “She was resurrected and came back from the past to change the frightening future that Biden and his circles are preparing for all of humanity.” Reade promised that her revelations would prevent Biden from “starting World War III and destroying lives.” 

Was there more to come? The program host certainly hinted at it, suspensefully teasing: “For many years Madam Reade has been collecting kompromat against the chieftain of the Washington regime.”

Using expressions that permeate Putin’s speeches and Russian state media programs, Reade said: “The ball of the vampires is over. Western hegemony is coming to an end. I think that Biden and Harris understand this.” The host exclaimed, “Her every claim is like a silver bullet for the vampire in Washington and all of his partners in crime, from Victoria Nuland to Kamala Harris.”

Footage showed Reade walking the streets of Moscow in sandals with a cat on a leash and a black dress seemingly covered with cat hair. Looking into the camera, she delivered a few short phrases in broken Russian, including a prediction that an October surprise is coming.

Tension built as the show promised Reade would reveal Washington’s secret plans. She baselessly asserted that Biden and Zelenskyy are cooking up a terrorist act or a false flag operation against Russia as their “October Surprise.” 

The promises that Kompromat against Joe Biden would deliver a crushing blow to the American president kept coming. But the viewer on the edge of her seat would have been disappointed. The evidence never materialized and Reade’s revelations were limited to rehashing her previously publicized accusations, with a few insults and insinuations thrown in. 

So Reade described President Joe Biden as a “sexual predator,” Vice President Kamala Harris as an “empty suit,” the late John McCain as “an absolute pig” and President Zelenskyy as “Euro-trash” and an “empty vessel” with “zero moral values.” Smirking and giggling, Reade predicted that Zelenskyy’s end is near and “his future is short.”

The rest was predictable and verging on the turgid. There was little effort to pretend that the newly arrived American, now wholly dependent on the Russian state, was doing anything other than repeating scripted phrases on behalf of her paymasters.

Whatever the truth of her original claims, nothing new was offered. “My country betrayed me, I didn’t betray my country,” she said in the now-cliched apologia of the turncoat. Russians were once again told that Biden and Harris are plotting World War III, that “America keeps poking the bear” and that Vladimir Putin is wise and patient.

Anyone still awake by this point would have heard her plead for Russian citizenship from “Vladimir Vladimirovich.” 

No doubt that day will come, at which point Russians can anticipate another state media spectacle with Ms Reade sharing her geopolitical observations. The world can only wait.

Julia Davis is a columnist for The Daily Beast and the creator of the Russian Media Monitor. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Screen Actors Guild, and Women In Film. Actors Guild, and Women In Film.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

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