Every four years, we hear top Democrats complain about Russia and other foreign powers interfering in our elections. They don’t mean foreigners voting—ironically, many Democrats now support foreigners voting in American elections. And no, they don’t mean money flowing from foreign countries to non-profits that work to get-out-the-vote and influence the election process. What the Democrats mean by foreign interference is foreign powers spreading “disinformation” online.
Recently, Senator Mark Warner (VA-D) said that U.S. voters are vulnerable to Russia and China disinformation campaigns that are designed to influence voters and undermine democracy. Just last week, an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told reporters “The American public should know that content that they read online — especially on social media — could be foreign propaganda.”
Warner doesn’t think social media companies are doing enough to police speech on their platforms.
He’s not alone. Democrat Vice Presidential Nominee Tim Walz said “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation.”
I guess Walz and Warner missed the memo on companies censoring information about the assassination attempt of President Trump, including the iconic images of Trump rising to his feet and defiantly putting his fist in the air as blood poured down his face.
I guess they also forgot about the First Amendment.
But I digress. Warner’s comments shouldn’t come as any surprise. These accusations of foreign interference in our elections and the spread of disinformation seem to come along every four years.
Let me refresh your memory.
In 2020, the New York Post broke one of the most important stories of the 2020 election—the Hunter Biden laptop. It contained videos of the President’s son doing drugs, naked pictures, and bombshell emails revealing that Hunter Biden introduced his Ukrainian business partner to then Vice President Biden. President Trump dubbed it the “laptop from hell.”
This laptop should have been a huge media story—especially since then-candidate Biden claimed to not discuss his son’s foreign business dealings with him.
With impeccable speed, the Biden campaign moved to squash the story. They got 50 former senior intelligence officials to sign a letter that they believed the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The story of the laptop quickly became off-limits in the mainstream media. When Americans went to the ballot box, they were led to believe that the laptop was a fake.
Conveniently after the election, the laptop was determined to be real and was used as evidence in Hunter Biden’s gun trial that resulted in his conviction.
But it wasn’t just 2020, when the Democrats cried Russia.
In 2016, Hilary Clinton suggested that Russia was working to elect Trump. Russia was driving the story about her deleted emails and the use of a private server.
When she lost the election, Democrats were quick to blame Russia. After all, it could not have been because Americans rejected her policies in favor of an agenda that put America first and prioritized closing the southern border. No, it had to be Russia.
The cries of Russian interference in the election grew. Congressional aides told reporters that the Central Intelligence Agency had concluded that Russia mounted a covert intelligence operation to influence the U.S. election in an effort to help Donald Trump win.
Hilary even claimed that Trump was an “illegitimate president” partially blaming Russian hacking for Trump’s victory. But you won’t hear her called an election denier.
Flash forward to 2024.
After a disastrous debate performance, the mainstream media would no longer help cover up President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and the Democrats unceremoniously forced him to drop out of the race. In less than two days, the Democrats coronated Kamala Harris to be the Democrat’s Presidential nominee.
New polling shows Trump up over Kamala Harris by two points.
I’m waiting to hear what “disinformation” Russia will spread about Kamala Harris.
Will it be her radical stance to ban fracking? Will it be her support to get rid of private health insurance? Will it be her belief that illegally crossing the border should be decriminalized? Will it be her support to defund the police? Or will it be her now infamous affair with California politician Willie Brown?
I guess we will have to wait and see.
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Lauren Bowman Bis is the Director of Communications of the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Before joining the Foundation, she was a member of President Trump’s White House Communications team and his 2020 re-election campaign.