If you saw and believed a viral video last week that showed someone tearing up ballots in Pennsylvania, I have some bad news for you: As the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency explained on Friday, the video was “manufactured and amplified” by Russian actors.

If this news sounds at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. Days earlier, U.S. officials exposed a smear campaign against Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, which also apparently originated from a Kremlin-linked propaganda outlet.

The same day as those revelations, The Washington Post reported on a Republican operative who’s allegedly “working directly with Russian military intelligence to pump out deepfakes and circulate misinformation that targets Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign.”

A month earlier, federal prosecutors alerted the public to alleged Russian payments to prominent far-right media personalities.

There’s a reason that U.S. intelligence agencies keep warning the American public that Russia is implementing “a broad range of influence efforts” targeting the U.S. elections.

It was against this backdrop that Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and faced an important line of questions about the Kremlin-linked tactics. As Axios noted, the Ohio senator largely expressed indifference.

Asked on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” what price Russia should pay for trying to manipulate American voters using a fake video of Pennsylvania ballots being destroyed, Vance said the country should not set its policy based on “a foreign country spreading videos on social media.”

Appearing on a network that his running mate has targeted in hysterical fashion, Vance said of Russian election interference, “I think it’s bad, but social media posts and social media videos, Margaret, you want us to go to war because the Russians made a ridiculous video or paid for it?”

When host Margaret Brennan reminded her guest that there are options beyond war, the senator derided Biden administration sanctions on Russia.

Asked if he’d at least call on Moscow to knock it off, Vance said he could do that, but Russia would probably just do it anyway.

The same morning, the Ohioan appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and hedged on whether he’d describe Russia as an “enemy.” In the same interview, host Kristen Welker asked, “Under a Trump/Vance administration, can you pledge sitting here today that the U.S. will continue to remain a member of NATO?”

The senator replied, “Of course, we’re going to honor our NATO commitments. But I think it’s important, Kristen, that we recognize that NATO is not just a welfare client.”

That was not a definitive “yes.”

A day earlier, Vance appeared on a podcast and downplayed Ukraine’s geopolitical significance. In the same interview, he suggested the U.S. was partially to blame for the war in Ukraine, before adding, in reference to our NATO allies, “I mean, look, if I was a European country, in some ways, I would feel kind of pathetic. … Because these guys, they don’t even have their own countries anymore. They just do whatever the United States tells them to do.”

As extraordinary as it’s been to watch Donald Trump echo a Kremlin-friendly script, let’s not overlook the degree to which his running mate is doing the same thing.