n 1998, Igor Panarin, a Russian intelligence official turned scholar, presented a paper at a European conference about information warfare, predicting that the United States would, in the near future, descend into another civil war and divide into several mini-nations, each backed by a different world power.

Panarin and his theories were embraced by the Putin regime, and he became a well-known expert pontificating on TV about the decline of the United States, as well as an adviser to the Kremlin. His thinking has been repeatedly cited as a window into the Putin view of how to undermine the United States: use racial and religious diversity and political polarization to exacerbate existing divides.

Unfortunately, instead of seeing the spread of fake news by Russia as a national-security threat—as almost every member of Congress seemed to, regardless of party, at the hearings this week—Trump has spent a year dismissing concerns about Russian propaganda while echoing its tropes, and attacking the American news media as the real fake news. His aides even sometimes repost the very accounts recently unmasked as Russian plants.

How Trump Helps Russian Trolls | The New Yorker