While the Democratic party melts down over Joe Biden's cognitive decline - an obvious risk to US national security, the 2024 election wouldn't be complete without a Trump-Russia narrative.

To that end, the Wall Street Journal reports that the Russian government has launched a 'whole-of-government" effort to influence the US presidential election in favor of Donald Trump - who, for some reason, Russia held off on invading Ukraine while he was president (and ostensibly wouldn't have sent $175 billion and counting in US aid to combat).

Citing unnamed 'senior US intelligence officials,' the Journal writes:

The officials didn't mention Trump by name, but said that Russia's current activity—described as covert social-media use and other online propaganda efforts—mirrored the 2020 and 2016 election cycles, when Moscow also favored Trump and sought to undermine Democratic candidates, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

Of course, Russia's 2016 'influence campaign' amounted to roughly $100,000 in Facebook ads, which "didn't reference any specific presidential candidate, or even the election itself," largely targeting BLM members and 'Pokemon Go' aficionados.

Insidious.

That said, the officials say that the activity witnessed so far this election cycle "isn't on the scale or scope seen in 2016, when Russia's actions included a hack-and-leak of Democratic Party emails, rudimentary cyber-probing of some state election systems and other actions intended to undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign."

Hacked emails, you say?