2025-05-07
22 分钟In January this year, American Vice President J.D.
Vance spoke at a security conference in Munich and took the opportunity to criticize Romania
for canceling its December elections.
As I understand it,
the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections.
If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country,
then it wasn't very strong to begin with.
How did Romania's election become a talking point for the Trump administration?
Did digital advertising on social media really upend a democratic election?
Was Russia meddling in the election?
I'm Rowan Ings, and you're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
In this episode of BBC Trending,
we're investigating how TikTok campaigns allegedly derailed an election.
In December,
the Constitutional Court of Romania annulled the first round of presidential elections after the surprise victory of far-right candidate Kalin Georgescu.
The votes are being recast in May, but Georgescu has been banned from running.
He was also detained on charges including setting up an organisation with fascist,
racist or xenophobic characteristics.
He denies the charges and he's accused the authorities of inventing evidence to justify stealing the election.
How did this happen?