Russian Plot to Interfere in Election Isn’t a Big Deal

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) doesn’t seem to care that the Department of Justice revealed a Russian plot to once again influence a presidential election. To him, they’re just “a few memes or videos.”

Cotton told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday’s State of the Union that, while he thought people shouldn’t take money from adversarial governments like Russia and China, he didn’t think their impact would truly be felt on the 2024 election results. His comments came days after the DOJ announced Russia Today employees paid $10 million to a U.S.-based media company that hosts various right-wing media figures including Tim Pool and Dave Rubin.

“I also think it’s fair to say that a few memes or videos in the vast sea of political commentary is not going to make much of a difference in this election, nor has it in past elections as well,” Cotton said. “What did make a difference in the last election is the lies about Hunter Biden’s laptop that more than four dozen former intelligence officials lied about in the middle of that campaign.”

Biden’s laptop has been a consistent talking point for right-wing figures, but Cotton’s deflection chooses not to engage with social media’s impact on the election—and the burgeoning use of generative artificial intelligence. Both campaigns have embraced social media to target audiences who derive their news from it, with Kamala Harris’ campaign co-opting “brat summer” and Trump and his supporters frequently sharing fake, AI-generated images or manipulated video clips.

Bash noted to Cotton how “some people only get their information from those memes and videos,” but he tried to explain what a true Russian threat was, offering hypotheticals of attacks on voting machines or electric grids.

“What really would be catastrophic is if a foreign government, say, hacked into the voter registration system during voting, or hacked into election machines and erased votes, or turned off the electricity in a big city on Election Day,” he said.

“That worries me a lot more than a few videos or memes,” he later added, noting that they’re “really not all that consequential in the grand scheme of things.”

Cotton did not offer any evidence or note any intelligence briefings to back up such threats.