Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Oct 08, 2025

Trump adviser apologises for interview with Kremlin-backed media

Trump adviser apologises for interview with Kremlin-backed media

Scott Atlas says he regrets ‘allowing myself to be taken advantage of’, adding he was unaware that Russian news outlet RT was a registered foreign agent.

Scott Atlas, a White House policy adviser on the coronavirus, apologised on Sunday for “allowing myself to be taken advantage of” by a Russian media outlet backed by the Kremlin.

Atlas said he spoke to RT without realising the company’s foreign ties.

“I recently did an interview with RT and was unaware they are a registered foreign agent,” tweeted Atlas, a neuroradiologist who joined the White House in August. “I regret doing the interview and apologise for allowing myself to be taken advantage of. I especially apologise to the national security community who is working hard to defend us.”


The Foreign Agents Registration Act “requires certain agents of foreign principals who are engaged in political activities or other activities … to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities”, according to the Justice Department.

Atlas did a lengthy interview with RT’s Afshin Rattansi on Saturday, just days before Tuesday’s presidential election. The nearly 28-minute segment was posted to the YouTube page Going Underground on RT.

The director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, warned last month that Iran and Russia had obtained voter registration data of some Americans. And US intelligence officials found that Russia had sought to influence the 2016 presidential election, writing in a January 2017 report that “Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect [Donald] Trump”.

In August, the director of the National Counter-intelligence and Security Centre, William Evanina, announced that Russia was “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former vice-president Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment’”.

“Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television,” he said in a statement at the time.

In the interview on Saturday, Atlas said there was no understating the pandemic, noting the US death toll.

“It’s tragic. There’s no question about that,” he said. “But if you wanna know what’s happening right now, I think there’s a gross distortion that has sort of been typical of the reporting on this. And that is that there’s this frenzy of focusing on the number of cases when we see a lot of reasons to be sort of, you know, cautiously optimistic here rather than fearful.”

More than 9 million Americans have been infected by Covid-19, and more than 230,000 people have died in the US.

Trump has falsely claimed that the country is “rounding the turn”, but Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told The Washington Post in an interview published on Saturday that the nation was “in for a whole lot of hurt.”

“It’s not a good situation,” he said. “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×