Daily Beast: “What if we cracked down on Russian trolls and it didn’t matter? That’s the situation the United States faces as Election Day draws near. Yes, the President of the United States is still besotted by a diminutive Russian dictator. Yes, his minions who play legally acting officials on TV try to squelch even the tamest of warnings about Russian interference. And, yes, the president’s pals are still working arm-in-arm with men they know to be Russian agents.”
“But even against those headwinds, the job of an Internet Research Agency troll is even less rewarding in lolz than it is in rubles this time around. In the years since 2016, In the years since 2016, America’s social media platforms, government agencies, and ordinary folks have gotten better at spotting and slowing down Russian trolls. So hooray America? Hardly. Fighting foreign trolls is a necessary but insufficient condition for ensuring an election is free of mass disinformation and confusion. The problem is that President Trump is doing what the St. Petersburg office drones could have only dreamed of in 2016: using the world’s most powerful megaphone to sow chaos and confusion about the voting process and de-legitimize American democracy.”