also questioned Joe Biden's fitness for office and promoted unfounded rumors that he could only debate effectively with the use of headpieces and/or performance-enhancing drugs. Following the election, RT uncritically promoted Trump's unfounded claims of electoral fraud, and Moore and Colley noted that in its coverage of the electoral process, RT claimed that the process was "dysfunctional, fraudulent or futile". Treatment of Putin and Medvedev A 2007 article in The Christian Science Monitor stated that RT reported on the good job Putin was doing in the world and next to nothing on things like the conflict in Chechnya or the murder of government critics. According to a 2010 report by The Independent, RT journalists have said that coverage of sensitive issues in Russia is allowed, but direct criticism of Vladimir Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev was not. Masha Karp wrote in Standpoint magazine that contemporary Russian issues "such as the suppression of free speech and peaceful demonstrations, or the economic inefficiency and corrupt judiciary, are either ignored or their significance played down". In 2008, Stephen Heyman wrote in The New York Times that in RT's Russia, "corruption is not quite a scourge but a symptom of a developing economy". Anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism The New Republic writer James Kirchick accused the network of "often virulent anti-Americanism, worshipful portrayal of Russian leaders". Edward Lucas wrote in The Economist (quoted in Al Jazeera English) that the core of RT was "anti-Westernism". Julia Ioffe wrote: "Often, it seemed that Russia Today was just a way to stick it to the U.S. from behind the façade of legitimate newsgathering." Shaun Walker wrote in The Independent that RT "has made a name for itself as a strident critic of US policy". Allesandra Stanley wrote in The New York Times that RT is "like the Voice of America, only with more money and a zesty anti-American slant". David Weigel writes that RT goes further than merely creating distrust of the United States government, to saying, in effect: "You can trust the Russians more than you can trust those bastards." Russian studies professor Stephen F. Cohen stated in 2012 that RT does a lot of stories that "reflect badly" on the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and much of Western Europe and that they are "particularly aggrieved by American sermonizing abroad". Citing that RT compares stories about Russia allowing mass protests of the 2011–2012 Russian election protests