July 22, 2020

Trump Campaign Smears American Protesters With Photo From Ukraine

“Chaos & violence.”

A police officer attacked by protesters during clashes in Ukraine, Kyiv on February 18, 2014Mstyslav Chernov/Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

President Donald Trump is trying to boost his reelection chances by highlighting his efforts to use federal officers to crack down on what he claims is lawlessness in US cities. This week, his campaign ran a Facebook ad that showed protesters attacking a police officer. The words “chaos & violence” appear under the photo, a suggestion that Trump will stop such actions.

But the image is not from a protest in an American city. It is from Kyiv in 2014, part of the so-called Maidan Revolution against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian policies. Yanunkovych was eventually forced out. He fled to Moscow—but not before exacting a bloody toll. His effort to suppress the uprising resulted in the deaths of an estimated 130 Ukrainians. Most were protesters killed by troops deployed by Yanukovych. More than 30 deaths were reported during demonstrations on February 18, 2018, the day the photo was taken.

Yanukovych was accused of extensive corruption. Last year, a Ukrainian court convicted him of treason over his invitation to Russia to invade Ukraine in 2014. Paul Manafort, who worked as Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, was previously a longtime adviser to Yanukovych and was sentenced last year to seven years in prison for crimes that include illegally lobbying for Yanukovych in the United States and tax fraud related to his efforts to hide proceeds from his Ukrainian work. The House of Representatives impeached Trump last year for attempting to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. That scheme involved Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, working with former political allies of Yanukovych.

The Trump campaign’s error was flagged Tuesday night by Jesse Lehrich, a former foreign policy spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

In its effort to smear American anti-police-violence protesters, the Trump campaign—which did not respond to questions about the ad—seems to have inadvertently sided with pro-Russian forces suppressing democratic dissent in Eastern Europe.

Mstyslav Chernov, a Ukrainian photographer, confirmed via email that he took the photograph in Kyiv. He indicated the Trump campaign had not sought his permission to use the image but added that the campaign didn’t need to do so, since he published it on Wikimedia under a Creative Commons license, allowing anyone to use it. Chernov, who now works for the Associated Press, said he couldn’t comment further.

But Chernov previously seemed to fault the Trump campaign in remarks to Business Insider: “Photography has always been used to manipulate public opinion. And with the rise of social media and the rise of populism, this is happening even more,” Chernov said. “The only way to combat this is through education and media literacy. When people learn to independently distinguish truth from lies, then the number of manipulations will decrease.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate