Bill Clinton: "Russia attacking our whole system is serious"
Former President Clinton called out threats to the United States' democracy during a campaign event for Democratic New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Phil Murphy in Paramus, NJ.
"There's a big debate today about what New Jersey, and what America need, to go forward," Mr. Clinton said. "Most of the headlines are about all the problems. Oh we have problems, this North Korean deal is serious. Russia attacking our whole system is serious."
The former president then delved into the evidence of Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election and how it may have affected future votes.
"What they're really trying to do is not just win one election. What they're really trying to do is to be able to pollute the sources of information so much that there'll be no difference between fact and fiction, truth and lie," he said.
Earlier in October, the Senate Intelligence Committee's Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, said the committee has uncovered evidence that Russia attempted to "create chaos at every level" during the presidential election.
The committee, alongside other congressional and agency investigations, has discovered evidence of Russia's attempts to hack and release political files, take advantage of 21 states' electoral system vulnerabilities, and utilize polarizing accounts as well as paid advertising on social media to further drive ideological divisions in the United States during the 2016 presidential election.
"And then all this crowd of authoritarians will come along and say 'well since you can't get good information any more, and since you don't know whether two and two is four or five, it's really impossible to have a genuine democracy. So you won't mind very much, will you? If we make it harder for some people to vote? Or we don't get around to counting their votes, and we don't really need an inclusive democracy,'" Mr. Clinton said.
