[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 120 (Tuesday, July 17, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5006-S5010]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TRUMP-PUTIN SUMMIT

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, at the Helsinki summit yesterday, 
President Trump embarrassed our country, undermined American values, 
and openly sided with Russia's authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin 
against the U.S. intelligence community's unanimous assessment that 
Russia interfered in our 2016 Presidential election. John McCain is 
right when he says it was ``one of the most disgraceful performances by 
an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President 
Trump's naivete, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats 
is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki 
was a tragic mistake.''
  That is not Bernie Sanders. That is former Republican Presidential 
candidate Senator John McCain of Arizona.
  Today, after a strong international backlash, Trump, in a bizarre 
statement, claimed he misspoke and of course blamed the media for 
reporting what he said. Even now he could not help but suggest that the 
electoral interference ``could be other people also,'' not just Russia.
  Today, we face an unprecedented situation of a President who, for 
whatever reason, refuses to acknowledge an attack on American 
democracy. Either he really doesn't understand what has happened or he 
is under Russian influence because of compromising information they may 
have on him or because he is ultimately more sympathetic to Russia's 
authoritarian-oligarchic form of society than he is to American 
democracy. Whatever the reason, Congress must act, and must act now, to 
demand that the President of the United States represent the interests 
of the American people and not Russia.
  Let us be clear. Russia has been meddling not only in U.S. elections 
but in the elections of other democracies--the United Kingdom, France, 
Germany, to name just a few. Russia's goal is to advance its own 
interests by weakening the transatlantic alliance of democracies that 
arose after World War II, while also inflaming internal divisions in 
each of these countries.
  We should also be clear that this interference is directed from the 
very highest levels of the Russian Government. Last week, Special 
Counsel Robert Mueller announced a set of indictments of 12 members of 
Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU. There can be no doubt 
that given the nature of the Russian Government, Vladimir Putin was 
directly involved in this effort, but our concern is not only what has 
already happened, it is what could happen in the future.
  Last week, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, a former 
Republican Senator, raised the alarm on growing cyber attack threats 
against the United States in a range of areas, including Federal, 
State, and local government agencies, the military, business, and 
academia, saying the situation is at a ``critical point.'' He said:

       [Russia is the] most aggressive foreign actor, no question. 
     And they continue their efforts to undermine our democracy.

  Coats compared the warning signs to those the United States faced 
ahead of the September 11th terrorist attacks. This is a clear and 
present threat to our democratic system and those of our allies. 
Ultimately, of course, we want a

[[Page S5007]]

peaceful relationship with Russia. We do not want a return to the Cold 
War, and we surely do not seek conflict, but at the same time, we must 
be very clear that we oppose what Putin is doing, both in terms of his 
foreign policy and his domestic policy.
  On foreign policy, we will not accept Russian meddling in the 
elections of democratic countries, stoking political tensions by 
promoting hatred and suspicion of immigrants and minorities and trying 
to undermine longstanding alliances between democratic allies.
  In 2014, in violation of international law, Russia invaded 
neighboring Ukraine and annexed the Crimea region. Russia has 
assassinated political opponents abroad, most recently through the use 
of poison in Salisbury, England, on a former spy and his daughter, a 
chemical attack that endangered the lives of many civilians. The 
British Government concluded that this atrocious attack was likely 
carried out by Russia's military intelligence service.
  Domestically, Putin has undermined democracy in Russia, crushing free 
speech, jailing political opponents, harassing and assassinating 
journalists who criticize him, and increasing persecution of ethnic and 
religious minorities and the LGBT community. President Trump had an 
opportunity to speak out on all of these issues, to confront Putin 
about these destabilizing and inhumane policies, but he chose not to. 
If the President of the United States is not going to do it, Congress 
must.
  The Congress must make it clear that we accept the assessment of our 
intelligence community with regard to Russia's election meddling in our 
country and in other democracies. The Congress must move aggressively 
to protect our election systems from interference by Russia or any 
foreign power and work closely with our democratic partners around the 
world to do the same. The Congress must demand that the sanctions 
against Russia that were passed last year be fully implemented. The 
Congress must make it clear that we will not accept any interference 
with the ongoing investigation of Special Counsel Mueller, such as the 
offer of preemptive pardons or the firing of Deputy Attorney General 
Rod Rosenstein, and that the President must cooperate with this 
investigation.
  Finally, the Congress must make it clear to President Trump that his 
job is to protect the values that millions of Americans struggled for 
and died to defend--the values of democracy, justice, and equality.
  Tweets, comments, and press conferences are fine, but we need more 
from Republican Senators now. It is time for the Senate to rein in the 
President's dangerous behavior. If their leadership will not allow 
votes on dealing with this extraordinarily important matter, then my 
Republican colleagues must join with Democrats to make it happen, or 
all of their words are worthless.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, the events of the last 36 hours, 
particularly the issue that now dominates the media coverage in 
America, and our political debates on the floor cause me to come today 
to the floor of the Senate to speak for a few minutes to my 
constituents in the State of Florida but also to anyone else who 
clearly should care about this issue across our country, for it is one 
that impacts our Nation in ways that I don't think have been fully 
vetted or are clearly understood by enough people.
  The idea that the Russian Federation, at the command of Vladimir 
Putin, interfered in our election is something that most Americans are 
now familiar with. It has been a topic of ongoing conversation, 
discussion, debate, argument, and dispute, pretty much since the fall 
of 2016 and to the present day. It has morphed into something that has 
become domestically more of a partisan issue. It is hard to believe. If 
you were able to get in a time machine and go back just 5 years and 
tell someone that Russian interference in our election would become a 
partisan issue, along the lines in which we see it play out now, few 
would believe you.
  I will spend very little time today talking about the past and saying 
``you guys did this on the other side of the aisle before we did'' and 
vice versa because it isn't constructive and means nothing to the 
future.
  It wasn't long ago, in a major Presidential debate where the 
Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, pointed to Russia as the greatest 
geopolitical challenge of the United States, that he was roundly mocked 
not just by President Obama, who was running for election and 
subsequently won, but by many in the press. I don't say that for 
purposes of drawing a ``you guys were wrong back then'' kind of 
argument. I say it solely for purposes of understanding how far we have 
come and where we are today.
  By the way, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that statement. I 
believe, by and large, that the greatest geopolitical challenge for the 
United States and the world in the 21st century will be whether China's 
rise is peaceful and productive or not.
  When the story of the 21st century is written, there will be some 
chapters in that book about Vladimir Putin and Russia, and it is a 
topic that increasingly dominates our domestic debate today in ways 
that I think require more careful examination and understanding if we 
are to make from it good public policy and good decisions for the 
country.
  I think it begins with something that I talked about last week; that 
is, understanding the nature of this conflict. It begins with a man, 
Vladimir Putin. I don't know the man, but I know enough about him and 
have certainly learned enough about him to make some pretty clear 
assessments that I believe in deeply. The first is that this is a man 
who was raised in the Cold War Soviet Union, where people were trained 
to be suspicious about each other, and who then went on to a career in 
the intelligence agency of that country, the KGB. The result is that he 
is, by nature and by all accounts, both a suspicious and a paranoid 
individual, as someone probably would be if they spent their whole life 
lying to other people. You begin to assume that everyone is a liar. 
This is a man who made his living by deceiving westerners and 
manipulating them.
  He also grew up in a society where neighbors spied on each other and 
kids turned their parents in, and you never really knew who the other 
person you were talking to was. But if you were reported as someone who 
was against the government, your career, your ability to go to school 
and the quality of life for your family would be deeply impacted. There 
is no way that you grow up in a society like that and in an environment 
like that and, then, later on, go and work as a spy and it does not 
somehow frame the way you operate or think for years to come.
  The other thing that is pretty clear--for reasons I don't fully 
understand because I don't know him, I don't know his family, and I 
don't know his upbringing--is that he takes everything deeply personal. 
Any sort of effort against Russia is not a geopolitical decision or 
something that he can depersonalize. He seems to absorb all these 
things as a personal attack on him. As a result, he, I think, has come 
to view himself as Russia--as the embodiment of the Russian Federation.
  You add to all of that his views as a leader, and it is interesting 
because, if you go back to Vladimir Putin 15 years ago, he wasn't 
nearly as confident or as bold as he is at this moment. There are a lot 
of reasons for it, but this is a person who accidentally became the 
leader of Russia. He is kind of almost the guy who stumbled into the 
role because of a series of circumstances. He was hardly known before 
he started his career as Prime Minister but went on to the Presidency, 
nonetheless. He is someone who wound up in this position almost by 
accident, but since then, he has solidified his hold.

  There is the Vladimir Putin from the first time around and the 
Vladimir Putin from the second time around, but one thing is abundantly 
clear from his public statements, and that is that he viewed the end of 
the Cold War as a disaster for Russia, and not for the reasons some 
people think. It is not an ideological rationale, but because Russia, 
which already has a deep and long history in its geopolitics of feeling 
ignored by Europe and Asia and disrespected by the world--at the end of 
the Cold War, Russia was a nation that faced incredible challenges.

[[Page S5008]]

  Imagine for a moment that you are in the government or living in the 
Soviet Union and you oversee this incredible empire that covers all of 
this territory and have all these nations within your sphere of 
influence, and overnight, it all evaporates. Overnight, all of the 
countries in your periphery begin to join NATO. They start having 
elections. They start becoming allies of the United States. Your 
territory shrinks. One day, Ukraine is part of the Soviet Union; the 
next day, it is its own country.
  Then add to that, over the next 12 to 15 years, the sort of emergence 
of the United States for much of that period of time as the world's 
sole superpower, while Russia was struggling to have an economy or even 
be relevant in the global discourse.
  Then you come to see that Vladimir Putin viewed that period of time 
in world history, up to the present day, as an example of the strong 
America and strong West abusing a weak Russia, because this is 
ultimately how he views life and how he views the world. It is a battle 
between the weak and the strong, where the strong prey on the weak. You 
know who he wants to be. So because of all of that and because he is 
paranoid and because he is suspicious, he believes the United States, 
for example, was behind the protests in 2011 that broke out on the 
streets against his rule. He believes the United States is behind 
everything that is happening in Ukraine. All of this leads him to the 
two goals he has, and there are two goals that have become crystal 
clear, especially beginning his second time around as President.
  A lot of people forget that he was President, he left, and his 
handpicked successor served for a period of time. Then he came back for 
the second time. It is the second Putin we are now dealing with.
  Since that time, two things have become pretty clear about his goals. 
The first is that he wants to reestablish Russia once again as a world 
power, like the time when the Soviet Union was on par with the United 
States of America. He can't do that economically. A lot of people don't 
realize this, but Russia is the 9th or 10th largest economy in the 
world. To put it in perspective, the Italian economy--Italy is a great 
country--the Italian economy, with less territory, less oil, fewer 
people, is bigger than the Russian economy. It is about equal to the 
Spanish economy. I would dare say--for example, my home State of 
Florida has an economy now at about $1 trillion. Russia is at $2 
trillion. There are States in this country that have a bigger economy 
than Russia's. So he is not a global economic superpower. The only 
thing that makes him a global superpower is the fact that they possess 
thousands of nuclear weapons and conventional military capabilities 
that are significant and have improved as he has invested in them. He 
quickly realized: The way I am going to become relevant in the world 
again is not through my economic or diplomatic prowess; the way I am 
going to become relevant in the world again is I am going to use my 
conventional weapons, my conventional capabilities, along with some 
asymmetrical ones, to inject myself in the discussion in different 
parts of the world and show people that Russia and Vladimir Putin are 
strong again.
  That is what he has done. It actually began back in 2008 with the 
invasion of Georgia--we now commemorate the 10th anniversary of that--
but it also plays out in his intervention in Syria or the annexation of 
Crimea. I believe he would have moved forward into Kiev and broader 
Ukraine had there not been the EU and U.S. sanctions against him as a 
result.
  The first objective is to make Russia a world power again. The second 
objective, which he thinks is tied to the first, is that he has to make 
America weak. Vladimir Putin is a strong believer in zero-sum 
propositions--not in the idea that somehow we can both be better off or 
that there can be a win-win but a true believer in the idea that in 
order for me to be stronger or us to be stronger, you have to be 
weaker.
  It plays out that in order for Russia to be stronger, America, which 
he views as his greatest geopolitical competitor, has to be weaker. 
That is why they chose to interfere in the 2016 election.
  Let me say this: I don't think Vladimir Putin interfered in our 
elections; I don't believe he interfered in our elections; I know it 
for a fact. By the way, so does everyone who has looked at this issue 
and knows anything about it. There is zero doubt about it. What I think 
we are missing in our debate is the why and the how.
  The why is not what people think. He may have had a personal 
preference in an election, but his interference and his efforts to 
interfere in our elections began well before the President of the 
United States descended down those escalators in New York in the summer 
of 2015. They intended to do this long before that period of time.
  His No. 1 objective was to ensure that no matter who was elected 
President of the United States, that person would assume office under a 
cloud of nagging and persistent controversy. He wanted to weaken them 
internally because, as an intelligence officer, he understood the power 
of being weakened from within. He understands it so much that he 
jealously protects his image in Russia, he guards it, disclosing very 
little about himself or about his personal life. He never puts himself 
in a position to appear vulnerable. He only shows pictures of things he 
wants people to see and actually allows no dissent--to the point where 
a substantial number of the people who opposed Vladimir Putin are not 
out of politics or even in jail; they are dead. Sadly, the world is 
littered with story after story of a Russian opposition figure found 
dead in his hotel room, strangled, fell out of a window, poisoned. It 
happens over and over again. These things are not a coincidence.
  He wanted to weaken whoever was the next President of the United 
States. No matter how this election turned out in November, whether the 
President was named Trump or Clinton, we would be dealing with a 
President right now under a cloud of controversy because he had it 
lined up either way.

  The second thing he wanted to do as part of the first part is 
undermine confidence in our institutions--I mean all of our 
institutions: our elections, the media, our political figures, 
everything. It has extended to important institutions like the FBI and 
our intelligence agencies. He undermined confidence so that no one 
could be believed. And the President is under controversy. Divide us 
against each other so that there are no authorities in which we trust. 
Some of this, by the way, was already happening in our country, but 
they had the nuanced understanding of it to be able to exploit it.
  The third, as part of the first and second, is to really drive 
divisions--not just to weaken the President and undermine confidence in 
our institutions but look for ways to do so by exacerbating preexisting 
tensions in our society.
  These were the aims of the Russian interference campaign beyond 
everything else. It was not about electing one candidate or another; it 
was about these things. It would be hard to see what happened yesterday 
and the reaction to it and not conclude that this effort succeeded his 
wildest expectations. Today, the President of the United States has 
operated for the better part of a year and a half under a persistent 
cloud of controversy.
  On the one side, his political opponents are intimating that his 
Presidency is illegitimate, that his election was not real. I heard 
words like ``treason'' thrown around yesterday.
  On the other side is complete denial that there was any interference 
and the undermining publicly of important institutions in this our 
country, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which, by the 
way, is made up of thousands of employees, the vast and enormous 
majority of whom are patriotic Americans who keep us safe every single 
day. Undermining confidence in our institutions is tied to the point I 
just made, not to mention the fact that, increasingly, Americans get 
their news and information from someone who tells you what you already 
believe and confirms your bias even further, which drives our 
divisions.
  There is no way you could see what was happening in this country over 
the last year and a half--which was already happening, by the way, and 
for which all of us in American politics are somewhat responsible--and 
not conclude that Vladimir Putin's plan to undermine the Presidency, no 
matter who it

[[Page S5009]]

was, to undermine confidence in our institutions, and to drive 
divisions in our country has been wildly successful, at a very low 
price.
  Interestingly, yesterday one of the interviews that he did--I think 
it was Mr. Wallace at FOX News who asked him about this, and his 
response was that none of the things that were leaked are untrue, as if 
to almost say with a wink, even if we colluded--or not colluded--even 
if we hacked and even if we did all these things and interfered, so 
what? We didn't lie. These are all true things.
  So what have I heard in response to some of this? I will not spend a 
lot of time addressing some of the arguments made by the President's 
opponents. There is an ongoing investigation being conducted by Mr. 
Mueller, which I believe should reach its conclusion naturally as he 
continues to do his work. I have said this, and I will repeat it: It is 
in the best interest of the President of the United States and of our 
country for Mr. Mueller to do his work without interference and be able 
to conclude it. No matter where you line up or whom you voted for, we 
should all want to know the truth. That truth will ultimately have to 
be proven in a court of law.
  From his history, I have no reason to believe that Mr. Mueller will 
not conduct a full, thorough, and fair investigation. Ultimately, it is 
truth and the light of the truth that will help us overcome a lot of 
these controversies we find today. Until that has happened, any 
accusations are unfair, unwise, and counterproductive.
  But one of the arguments I have heard from people on my side of the 
aisle is that this is not a big deal because everybody does it. And if 
by ``everybody does it'' you mean everybody spies, yes, virtually every 
nation on Earth has an intelligence agency, and some do a better job 
than others. But do not be misled--everyone does not do what we saw in 
2016. Our problem in 2016 was not that the Russians spied on Americans 
or that the Americans spied on the Russians or that the Chinese spied 
on us; our problem in 2016 is that the Russian Federation, under the 
command of Vladimir Putin, weaponized information. One thing is to 
gather information; another thing is to strategically leak it in an 
effort to influence the domestic politics of another country. And that 
is what Vladimir Putin ordered done for purposes of undermining the 
next President, whoever it was, and undermining confidence in our 
elections and our institutions.
  They hacked into emails. They released these emails through a third 
party. It was picked up in the media, it was reported, and then we 
fought about it. That is what they have done. They have done it in 
other countries for years. They did it somewhat in the Cold War. They 
did it in 2016. And they will do it again. Let there be no doubt--they 
will do it again. Then after they released all this stuff, they used 
their army of bots and trolls to drive this information online, on 
platforms, particularly trying to drive it to certain groups and people 
to divide us even further against each other.
  One of the most dangerous things they did, which is now open record 
in the indictment issued last week by the Mueller investigation, is 
they probed the electoral systems of our States and counties. A lot of 
people are saying: They didn't get in the ballot box. Absolutely. I 
tell you with full confidence that the reason President Trump won had 
nothing to do with Vladimir Putin--nothing. But I think we are wrong if 
we think all we should be worried about is the ability to change votes 
at the ballot box because if they can somehow change people's 
registration and enough people on election day go to vote and are told 
``You aren't allowed to vote,'' their trolls will be ready to drive 
that news out there on election day. Then come election day, no matter 
who won, the other side will say that there were these weird things 
that happened down there in some county or some State, so the election 
is not valid.
  Imagine that for a moment. Imagine an election in 2000 in my home 
State that was decided by less than 600 votes. Imagine that in a 
Republican county, a bunch of Democrats went to vote on election day 
and were told: You can't vote today because you are not registered. If 
that happened to enough people, the Russian trolls would jump all over 
it. They would start driving it on the news. It would be featured on 
cable news that day.
  That night, if they lost, they would be arguing ``The election was 
rigged. The electoral officials in the Republican county rigged the 
elections''--all driven by the Russians, and vice versa, by the way.
  That is the danger, that we can one day potentially elect a President 
of the United States who swears into office with a substantial number 
of people believing that the election was stolen, undermining not just 
the President at that point but our very system of democracy. That is 
what they did. Anyone who tells you that everyone does that is lying. 
Everyone does not do that. The United States does not do these things. 
I am a big critic of the Chinese, but the Chinese don't do these 
things. I have other problems with them. The Belgians don't do this, 
and the Japanese don't do this. Only one country in the world has 
weaponized information in this way in order to interfere in an 
adversary's election, and that is the Russian Federation under Vladimir 
Putin.

  The other argument I have heard is: What is wrong with better 
relations with Russia? Nothing is wrong with better relations with 
Russia. I will tell you right now that the world would be a better 
place, a more peaceful place, and our lives would be a little easier. 
We would be stronger if, somehow, we had a partner in the Russian 
Federation with whom we could work to deal with things like terrorism 
and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and Iran and all sorts of 
issues--North Korea. We all wish we had that.
  The reason that isn't happening, frankly, is not because of us. It is 
because of Vladimir Putin. For Vladimir Putin, better relations are not 
what he is interested in. He is not seeking a partnership with the 
United States. What he is seeking is geopolitical, perceptional 
equality. He wants to be viewed as being on par with America, both as a 
leader and his country as a whole, and he believes the only way he can 
do that is to pull himself up and tear us down. I, frankly, have to 
tell you that it is very difficult to have better relations with 
someone who believes that the only way for him to be better off is for 
you to be worse off. As long as the Russian Federation is led by 
someone who has total control of his government and has these views, it 
is going to be very difficult to have better relations.
  That does not mean we don't meet with Vladimir Putin. Anyone who says 
that the meeting, alone, is wrong is not being wise and is being 
disingenuous. As 90 percent of the nuclear weapons on this planet are 
possessed by the United States and the Russian Federation, that alone 
is reason for us to engage with Vladimir Putin. We have to. We have no 
choice. Yet we should engage with him with clear eyes and a clear 
understanding of what he is up to and what he is trying to do. We 
should engage with a very clear understanding that this is a man who, 
throughout his life as leader of the Russian Federation, has never 
passed up an opportunity to exploit the weakness of an adversary or a 
competitor. Every time he sees weakness and the opportunity to gain an 
advantage, he will take it, and any engagement with him in which that 
is not understood is a dangerous one.
  So I have no problem with having better relations with Russia. 
Frankly, I am not one of these people who is over the top on Russia to 
the extent of the threat it poses. It does have nuclear weapons, but we 
have bigger threats than Russia. Yet it is a very significant one that 
needs to be addressed.
  Our moving forward is what, I hope, we will focus on. Mueller will 
continue his work, and the Intelligence Committee, which I sit on, will 
continue its work. Yet we are going to have an election in a few 
months. We are going to continue to have elections every 2 years, 
hopefully, forever, and there is no reason to believe that they will 
not try to do this again.
  That is why, earlier this year, along with Senator Van Hollen, I 
proposed the DETER Act, which is the only thing that Vladimir Putin 
understands--deterrence. The DETER Act says here is a list of 
sanctions, and these sanctions will go into effect immediately if the 
Director of National

[[Page S5010]]

Intelligence, after an intelligence assessment, determines that Russia 
is, once again, interfering in our elections so that before he even 
does it, he has a very clear understanding of what the price is going 
to be.
  Men like Vladimir Putin operate as cost-benefit analyzers. They weigh 
the costs against the benefits, and then they decide what action to 
take. There is no doubt, in 2016, he saw that the costs of what he did 
were very low. He thought he could hide it. He thought, by the time we 
would have figured it out, it would have been too late. He thought that 
America would be in such disarray that it wouldn't be able to get its 
act together and actually impose any additional sanctions. He saw the 
benefits as extraordinary, so he took action, and he will do it again 
if he doesn't think the costs are high enough.
  My hope is, over the next few days and in a short period of time, we 
will figure out a way, in working together as Americans on this issue, 
to set aside all of the stuff about yesterday--that probe will 
continue, and our work on the Intelligence Committee will continue--and 
focus on the future.
  No matter how you feel about 2016, who among us would say that if 
Russia interferes in 2018--or in any year for that matter--it shouldn't 
be punished? Who among us would say, if we had the opportunity to put 
into law strong consequences for interference that could deter such an 
attack, we wouldn't want to do it? That is why I hope that no matter 
how you may feel about the other things that are going on that the 
Senate can come together and work together to pass this law, because, 
otherwise, we are leaving our Nation vulnerable.
  I will close with something I said back in October of 2016, which is 
that Vladimir Putin is not a Republican, and he is not a Democrat, and 
he is not a conservative, and he is not a liberal. Do not ascribe to 
him any of the attributes of American politics. He interfered in 2016 
in order to create chaos and controversy, not to elect any particular 
party or individual. By far, that was his strongest motivator, and he 
will do it again.
  I believe, if left unchecked, he will target Members of the Senate 
who he thinks are his opponents. He will target Members of Congress. 
Eventually, he will even target our debates outside of elections. I 
believe, if left unchecked, he is going to take the next step and not 
just leak information but will make it up. He is going to come up with 
9 emails that will be real and will embed a 10th that will be fake. It 
will be reported, and it might cost one an election or might cost 
someone enough heartache that one has to resign.
  Information is a very powerful weapon. If you go online, you will 
already see the ability to produce these deepfake videos that look 
real, videos that only an expert could tell are fake. They are of 
people saying or doing things they never said or never did. Imagine 
those being in the hands of a nation-state and being leaked 2 days 
before an election. A nation-state is going to do these things. It is 
going to happen if we do not deter it from happening and if we do not 
prepare our Nation and the American people. If you think this is 
chaotic, then allow that to happen without informing us and preparing 
us and strengthening us and putting in place a deterrent against that. 
Then you will know chaos--a chaos that will shake us to our core.
  I hope that we can take this small but important step of coming 
together as Americans and protecting our elections for years to come 
against an adversary who is determined to tear us down in order to 
build himself up. This is reality. This is the world and the threat we 
face. The sooner we address it the safer our Nation and our people will 
be.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

                          ____________________