Russian Pranksters Fooled Bernie Sanders By Posing as Greta Thunberg

Two Russians fooling Bernie Sanders, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, by posing as teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg and her father may not hurt his chances of winning the nomination and booting President Donald J. Trump out of office in the November 2020 general election, but it won’t help either.

The Russians, Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, told the Associated Press that the prank call happened in December. The audio recording of the call to Sanders was posted on YouTube on Thursday. The delayed posting, according to the pranksters, was due to Sanders' success in the Iowa Democratic caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. The Sanders campaign has not yet responded to Fox News, which first aired the story.

Liberal Democrats have had a tough few weeks. First, they had to sit through President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address that riled up House Speaker Nancy Pelosi so much that she ripped up her copy of the speech on camera at the address’s conclusion. The next day saw the partisan impeachment case end with the President’s acquittal.

The call exposes one of the two biggest issues facing Democrats in this election year. Their well-known hatred of the current president will not be changed by the fake call but their love of anything that hints of anthropogenic climate change might face some criticism.

Sanders' campaign is partly based on taking tough government-led measures to battle climate change, making him the perfect foil for the ersatz Greta. The real Greta gained global notoriety in her role as a teenage climate change activist. Sanders is also an avowed “Democratic Socialist“ and that played perfectly into the myth that he is an agent of the KGB.

On the call, Sanders responds to a female accented voice that offers to lend support to the Vermont senator's campaign. Sanders’ response was critical of Trump, saying he “…not only does not recognize the crisis of climate change, but he is actually encouraging more production of fossil fuels.”

Sanders continued later in the call, "Let us continue to talk and when you come to the United States I will bring some people together and we can do some interesting things, and if you wanted to make a statement in support of my candidacy and the program we have outlined for climate change, I would be very very appreciative.”

At one point during the exchange, the fake Thunberg proposes to record a hip-hop song with Sanders, singer Billie Eilish, and rapper Kanye West. Then she tells the senator that he was recruited by the KGB in 1988 when he visited Russia and has since been a "sleeper agent” and said, “Now it’s time to wake up and fulfill your mission, become president of the United States, build communism in the United States and work for Russia!” before Sanders hung up.

The two have pulled pranks on other U.S. politicians including Senator Lindsey Graham, Rep. Adam Schiff, and Rep. Maxine Waters. Graham relayed the message of a fake Turkish defense minister to President Trump while the other two said they would accept any information damaging to the current president.