On a recent episode of his podcast, Jonah Goldberg asks Bret Stephens why J.D. Vance is lecturing Europeans about democracy when he has previously criticized neocons for doing that kind of thing.

Goldberg says, “He hectors them about how Romania canceled some regional elections where some fascists did well or something like that.”

Stephens corrects him, saying, “It was the presidential election, but there was almost certainly outside interference.”

I’ve seen a lot of that over the past few days.

Lest I fall for misinformation—as it seems Goldberg did—I looked into it myself, and the bottom line is that it’s incredibly murky.

It does appear that there was a coordinated influencer campaign on TikTok in support of Călin Georgescu, but the claim that it was Russian interference rests solely on the Romanian intelligence services’ assertion that it mirrors Russian tactics.

There are also reports suggesting that the campaign was actually orchestrated by the center-right liberal party, which paid to amplify a particular hashtag. Supporters of Georgescu then hijacked that hashtag by using it themselves, thereby reaping the outsized views.

Who the hell knows?

The point is, I’m surprised at how otherwise careful pundits feel free to parrot EU talking points. The lesson: always triangulate, my friends.