Russian Olympic Champion Says Racist Obama Photo Was Work Of A Hacker When It Really Probably Wasn't
Irina Rodnina, a Soviet figure skating legend who lit the Olympic flame in Sochi, tries to distance herself from a controversial tweet. That defense worked so well for Anthony Weiner.
In September, Russian ex-Olympian figure skater and pro-Putin parliamentarian Irina Rodnina tweeted this doctored, blatantly racist photo of Barack and Michelle Obama.
After a flurry of abuse on Russian Twitter, Rodnina claimed she had been "sent the picture from the U.S." and wrote at the time: "Freedom of speech is freedom! Answer for your own complexes yourself!" She then deleted the tweets.
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul condemned her tweet, but the controversy quickly died down in Russia, where casual racism is widespread.
On Friday, however, the incident caught the attention of the wider public after Rodnina lit the Olympic torch to open the Winter Games in Sochi.
Rodnina finally apologized on Monday...
...and employed the "I was hacked" defense previously used by former congressman and sexting scandal star Anthony Weiner.
Two days earlier, however, Rodnina's daughter, HuffPost Live host Alyona Minkovski, responded to "Twitter hate" by implying the tweet was real.
Minkovski, a former host on Kremlin propaganda channel RT, also immediately retweeted her mother's apology tweets, which were written in a style more reminiscent of Alyona's Twitter feed than her mother's.