Right-wing media reacted to the brief Wagner Group rebellion in Russia with conspiracy theories

Right-wing media portrayed the rebellion as an excuse to avoid covering their Hunter Biden narratives, with some even suggesting that the U.S. was behind it

Some in right-wing media have claimed that the U.S. government had orchestrated the mutiny, potentially in order to serve a warmongering agenda. This commentary is in line with right-wing media’s tendency to blame anybody but Putin for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Others on the right have posited that the rebellion served a desired media narrative in order to distract from alleged corruption by President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. And in an even deeper journey into the fevered imagination, some posit that the White House arranged the rebellion for that specific purpose.

This particular angle stems from the right-wing media narrative that took hold last week regarding a message Hunter Biden reportedly sent to a Chinese business associate in July 2017 in which he demanded the completion of a business deal while claiming that his father was with him. (This narrative falls apart for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that Joe Biden did not hold any public office in July 2017.)