Two Russians say that they called Bernie Sanders and spoke with the 2020 presidential hopeful for 11 minutes while posing as Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and her father Svante.
Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov posted audio of the prank call to YouTube, as Fox News reports, revealing a conversation in which “Greta” and her father offer to help Sanders in his presidential campaign by endorsing him.
Stolyarov led the call, acting as Svante, while a woman who remains unnamed played the role of faux-Greta.
“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,” Sanders said.
The Russians then asked Sanders what they should do about an upcoming trip they were planning to Russia.
“I think what you don’t want to do is simply walk in there and get used,” Sanders said. “Russia and [President Vladimir] Putin has been very bad, as far as I know, on climate change.”
While the call started out plausible, it began to deteriorate from there when the conversation turned from climate change, a topic that Thunberg is famously passionate about, to chatting about Sanders’ 1988 visit to the Soviet Union.
The faux-Thunbergs tell Bernie that he was recruited to work for Russia during his trip but his memory was erased so that the CIA wouldn’t know.
When Sanders asked the pranksters if that’s what they really thought, the Russians responded that they did.
“Yes, you became a sleeper agent of the KGB,” they asserted, adding that it was time for Sanders to become activated and build a communist society in the United States for Russia.
Eventually, Sanders hung up the phone as the pranksters continued their rant.
Stolyarov and Kuznetsov have pranked high-profile politicians and celebrities in the United States before. The duo has a project titled “Stars Save the Earth” where they pose as Thunberg and prank people. The pair has also pranked Senator Lindsey Graham by pretending to be Turkey’s defense minister. They also fooled Representative Adam Schiff when they posed as the speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, and Representative Maxine Waters by again acting as Thunberg.
This time, they decided to wait to release a copy of the audio recording for several months until Sanders had success at both the New Hampshire and Iowa primaries.
