CatBus said:
https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/954739322388930562
Not enough facepalms in the world. I don’t know what’s worse: that after a US Senator was informed he was personally helping spread Russian propaganda, the Senator’s first instinct was to pretend he wasn’t just personally implicated and yell “Fake News!” at the media, or that, for his followers, that’s probably a good enough reaction.
Favorite Twitter response to his suggestion that “the Press” in particular needs to work to avoid spreading so much Russian propaganda on Twitter:
Funny. Most people only use one “s” when abbreviating “president.”
I don’t see any allegation of “Fake News!” here. When he says, “All of us need to step up,” I think he is clearly including himself and Congress. However he is engaged in damage control as he is placing responsibility on social media companies and the press to weed out these attempts by foreign powers too. I think he is saying the press needs to help identify these efforts by foreign powers.
We should keep in mind what counts here as “personally helping spread Russian propaganda”: something as small as liking a tweet that might have been put forward by a Russian agent. I don’t attribute lots of blame to a person who likes a tweet, worse retweets it, or horror-of-horrors follows the account that says stuff that sounds good.
We have found out that Russia was spending money to advance all kinds of issues, including ads ostensibly for Black Lives Matter. People all over America unwittingly spread Russian propaganda. And that’s never going to change. I think these kinds of attempts by foreign powers are feeble. Greater awareness is probably the best we can do.