Russia, China yearn for a President Trump, but for different reasons

KRASNOYARSK, Russia — Question more.

That’s the tagline for RT, the first 24-hour English-language news channel in Russia funded by the Kremlin.

I knew RT carried “Larry King Now” after a flap over a Donald Trump interview that ended up on Russian television. But when Ed Schultz, formerly of MSNBC, and former U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., a Fox News contributor, popped up on RT on my hotel TV screen in Krasnoyarsk, that really made me question more.

In his RT promo, King defines journalism as “asking the right questions and demanding the right answers.” It’s more than that.

On my two-week tour of Russia across three of 11 time zones, I coached investigative reporters serving as watchdogs against corrupt land deals, housing scandals, dangerous roads, seizure of a public lake for private gain, and even monks driving Mercedes as they try to drive locals off their island to improve their tourism coffers.

Of course, journalists also play an essential role to inform citizens about candidates and issues. I know, you’re fed up with this migraine of a presidential election campaign. But if you are thinking of sitting out the election, please think again.

Having spent two weeks in Russia this fall following seven weeks this summer in China, I have found new energy in two realities: We are about to elect the next leader of the free world, and the world is watching us.

Trigger warning: If the Russians and the Chinese had the right to vote in the U.S. election, look out for President Trump, but for entirely different reasons.

I’ve also been reminded of three truisms: We live in a small news media world; education can be indoctrination, and voter fraud is universal.

“We aired the U.S. presidential debate on Russian television even though we don’t even broadcast the debates for our own Russian elections,” a longtime Russian journalist friend said.

At the first presidential debate, through the Russian lens, Clinton wore blood red, looking more hawkish, more Barry Goldwater Republican, than her opponent. I heard Russians describe her views as “crazy” more than once.

In China the word “crazy” came up, but in this context: “If America is crazy enough to elect Trump, then he will be such a disaster that it will give China just the jump it needs to overtake America as the No. 1 economy in the world.”

In Novosibirsk, “the Chicago of Russia,” I provided an impromptu lesson at a private academy teaching English to students from seven to 70 years old. There boys 10 to 15 years old responded to lessons about American culture this way, thanks to the state-sponsored television news media:

“Why do we need to know about the Americans? They are our enemy.”

This summer I was a visiting scholar in Wuhan, “the Chicago of China.” After having spent most of my professional journalism career in the real Chicago working for the Tribune, I thought I learned all I needed to know about election fraud.

Then comes routine introductions at a journalism workshop in Yekaterinburg, hometown to Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first freely elected president in 1,000 years. An investigative reporter mentions offhandedly that he had just gotten out of jail to attend the training session.

On our first coffee break, he tells me he had been released after serving a 10-day sentence on trumped-up charges of striking a woman. I told him that he must have had a good attorney.

He said it was not an attorney who sprung him; it was the power of the people who rose up to support him knowing that the real reason for his incarceration was his reporting of voter fraud in the last election. He said the woman judge’s hands were shaking as she sat on the hot seat of bad publicity.

All hail the power of the press, here and abroad.

Voters in Russia and China share a common perspective. Unlike in America where on Election Night the people learn who won, the Russians and the Chinese already know who will win before they vote.

So your vote matters in this upcoming presidential election, and you can take pride in that.

In a world playing chess, please don’t get caught playing checkers. Question more. And remember, the world is watching you.

This story was originally published October 21, 2016 at 7:17 PM with the headline "Russia, China yearn for a President Trump, but for different reasons."