PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ELIZABETH BROCKWAY/THE DAILY BEAST

The Daily Beast just broke an exclusive story confirming that suspected propagandists used Facebook to organize at least a dozen pro-Trump rallies in Florida during the presidential election.

The Aug. 20, 2016, events were collectively called “Florida Goes Trump!” and they were billed as a “patriotic state-wide flash mob,” unfolding simultaneously in 17 different cities and towns in the battleground state. It’s difficult to determine how many of those locations actually witnessed any turnout, in part because Facebook’s recent deletion of hundreds of Russian accounts hid much of the evidence. But videos and photos from two of the locations—Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs—were reposted to a Facebook page run by the local Trump campaign chair, where they remain to this day.

“On August 20, we want to gather patriots on the streets of Floridian towns and cities and march to unite America and support Donald Trump!” read the Facebook event page for the demonstrations. “Our flash mob will occur in several places at the same time; more details about locations will be added later. Go Donald!”

The Being Patriotic FB group had 200,000 followers exposed to multiple pro-Trump, anti-Hillary events that included a 2016 July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s Brooklyn campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous October 2016 “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The Russians even organized a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower in November, when Trump was the president elect.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is at Russian President Vladimir Putin's summer residence in Sochi for talks on a variety of complex issues. No one is expecting any major breakthroughs in Sochi, writes the BBC.

The Germans lead European nations in their opposition over Crimea and Syria, and Russians are believed to be behind a direct cyber attack on Merkel's own Christian Democratic Party, in an effort to influence the upcoming September 24 elections.

Coincidentally -- or not -- US President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak to President Putin today, a call announced Monday. Experts say that Putin and Merkel have a grudging respect for each other, and surely it helps that the Chancellor speaks Russian, with Putin speaking German. European media reports that Putin is most interested in hearing Merkel's impressions of Trump.

With Donald Trump's love affair with autocratic strong men, Angela Merkel is believed to represent the future of democratic values around the globe. Trump's daughter Ivanka spent much time with Merkel last week, meetings that fared far better than the president's with her.

In January 2017, Foreign Policy wrote a fascinating piece on how Angela Merkel deals with bullies, noting that Vladimir Putin considers her to be a "dangerous person," according to Russian dissident and former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

The chancellor’s astounding record in outfoxing, outlasting, and outmaneuvering full-of-themselves male rivals, however, began before Putin appeared on the scene. Her track record offers the outlines of a go-to plan for dealing with bullies — and, not coincidentally, it dovetails tightly with her top foreign-policy advisor’s five-point plan for taking on Trump.

Merkel spent last time last week with Trump daughter Ivanka, at the W20 Summit in Berlin. After President Trump made an asshat of himself in refusing to shake Merkel's hand on her White House visit -- and seated his daughter with no foreign policy qualifications next to Merkel at a joint meeting -- Merkel turned the insults to her advantage by forging a relationship with Ivanka. Read on.

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