There have been some hot takes on the 17th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attacks, but Sen. Angus King (D-ME) may have the hottest — and most disturbing — telling a group gathered to honor victims of the attacks that alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election is both akin to and a continuation of the Al Qaeda-sponsored terrorism that left more than 3,000 Americans dead.
In his speech to first responders at a Lewiston, Maine fire station, King claimed that 9/11 was “the beginning of an attack that’s continuing today. They used airplanes into towers. Now people can use the click of a computer key in St. Petersburg, Russia to attack.”
He added that Russian “meddling,” which has so far proven existent but utterly ineffective at making major alterations of national election results, were “the same kind of attack today that occurred in 2001.”
King’s Republican opponent shared the video on social media Tuesday.
After a year-long investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has so far produced no evidence that Russian hackers had any significant impact on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, though they may have tried.
Russian cyber-attackers did use divisive social media postings to foment political division among the electorate, which may be insidious, but that’s a far cry from hijacking four planes with teams of attackers wielding box cutters, and flying those planes into major American landmarks, killing thousands and injuring thousands more. September 11, 2001 was the single largest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. The Russian hackers made bad memes about Black Lives Matter.
King has been campaigning as a “moderate” Democrat in a state where moderate, independent thinking is often rewarded. It’ll be a lot harder to make that argument, though, now that this video will appear in campaign commercials.