This weekend on CNN, host Dana Bash called out Republican Senator Tom Cotton over interviewing with Dave Rubin, who was accepting money from the Kremlin (perhaps unknowingly).
This week, it was revealed that a number of Conservative influencers were being bankrolled by Russian propaganda agencies. When Bash asked Cotton about his February interview with Rubin.
After Cotton responded, "I haven't seen any intelligence about this matter, I'll have seen the allegations," Bash shot back, "It sounds to me like you're downplaying the fact that Vladimir Putin is using people like Dave Rubin, whose show you went on in February, as a tool for his propaganda."
The Arkansas Republican attempted to defend himself by saying that the the Russian influence won't be successful, "So I'm not downplaying Vladimir Putin's designs or Xi Jinping's designs, the ayatollah's designs to try to influence our election. But using money to try to promote memes or videos on the internet is not exactly going to make a huge difference. Again, you shouldn't knowingly do that. And I don't know if any of these people..."
Bash quickly countered his talking points by saying:
"Do you know young people? You know some people only get their information from those memes and videos. But Dana, what we're 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 — those are things that are serious threats."