Longtime Democratic pundit James Carville chalked up Bernie Sanders’ resounding Nevada caucus victory to Russian interference on Saturday, claiming that Vladimir Putin was the ‘big winner’ of the caucus.

James Carville says the big winner in Nevada is Putin pic.twitter.com/KV2TjpNiCD

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) February 22, 2020

Carville is known for something of a running feud with Sanders. The Vermont socialist called the Democratic political consultant a “hack” earlier this month after Carville claimed he would be hopeless in a general election against Donald Trump.

It’s probably not too surprising that a figure closely linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton(Carville consulted Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 political campaign) isn’t a fan of Sanders. But his claim that Vladimir Putin is celebrating as Sanders stakes out a clear path to the Democratic nomination is nothing more than a cynical ploy.

Elements of the so-called intelligence community have made unsubstantiated claims that Russia is waging internet influence operations to boost the campaign of Sanders. The Democratic frontrunner pushed back against the Deep State-linked reports, which surfaced a day before the Nevada caucus.

Years after Robert Mueller’s seemingly endless probe into alleged grand Russian conspiracies to interfere in Americans failed to result in any major indictments or arrests, cable media entities remain wholly addicted to narratives alleging widespread social media influence campaigns waged by the Russian government.

Democrats are pulling of page out of a book they’ve used before in leveling Russian interference accusations against Sanders, and it increasingly appears as if the same set of vague and unsourced accusations are going to be trotted out against any political populist who threatens the interests of established interests within the Republican and Democratic parties.