I didn’t know that the phrasal verb ‘to do down something’ means to ‘bring down’ or ‘to destroy’. How natural does it sound to you? See this example:
They are being sponsored by Western governments Rich westerners who want to do down Russia.…
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I’ve never heard it before. It doesn’t sound natural at all. It sounds stupid.
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Well, the phrase was used by Stephen Sackur, one of the BBC’s top journalists:
Unless both Google’s AI and I didn’t really understand what he was really saying on the latest episode of his show “Hard Talk.”
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Nor do I, Torsten.
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“To go drown Russia” might work.
or
Who want to bring down Russia.
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I’ve never heard it, but Merriam-Webster has a definition.
British
“to get the better of (as by trickery)”
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You can hear the phrase here at about 19:13:
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It clearly sounds like “do down”.
He gives it a slight emphasis to say it clearly.
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Yea it does sound like he’s saying “do down”, but I have never heard this before.
I didn’t even think to look in a dictionary since I thought it was transcribed wrong. I just looked it up and found it in three different dictionaries. Apparently it’s a British thing. I wonder how common it is.
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Yes, that usage seems to fit in there.
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I’ve found a few more examples here:
Unfortunately, Youglish does not allow you to filter the examples where “do down” is a phrasal verb and not part of another phrase like “do something down there”.