One of the few times Donald Trump has acknowledged the possibility that Russia meddled in the 2016 election came during a press conference he gave as president-elect. “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia,” he said. “But I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people.” Months later he would backpedal, telling reporters that Vladimir Putin “said he didn’t meddle . . . and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.” Any evidence to the contrary, to Trump, seems to represent an attempt to delegitimize his presidency—and his hurt feelings are evidently more important than new evidence that Russia is poised to strike again.

On Tuesday, the heads of six U.S. intelligence agencies warned in no uncertain terms that Russian operatives’ efforts are ongoing, and that both the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections and elections overseas are likely targets. “We expect Russia to continue using propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople, and other means of influence to try to exacerbate social and political fissures in the United States,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee at the committee’s annual hearing on global threats. “There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations.”

That certainty comes in part from Dutch intelligence, whose own hackers reportedly penetrated the Russian hacker group Cozy Bear in the summer of 2014. According to de Volkskrant, the Dutch intelligence service AIVD was able to monitor the Russians in real time as they launched attacks on U.S. targets, including the State Department, and could see everything they did, every step of the way. They were even able to hack the security camera in the hallway outside the room where the Cozy Bear hackers gathered, in a university building near the Red Square, to work. All of that information was reportedly sent to the F.B.I., helping provide the technical basis for U.S. intelligence to conclude that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign.

Yet even in the face of overwhelming evidence, the president remains skeptical of Russian meddling, three sources close to him told CNN. Though the issue has nothing to do with the question of whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government—a matter currently being probed by special counsel Robert Mueller—to Trump, they are reportedly one and the same. The idea that Russians could have interfered in the election is, to the president, an argument that he was given help to win the election, and therefore didn’t win on his own.

By now, the president has proven that he has a preternatural ability to construct alternative realities, both in his own mind and in the minds of the right-wing press and his ever-loyal base. But in this case, Trump’s refusal to see the truth will come with tangible consequences in future election cycles; intelligence heads noted on Tuesday that Trump “has not directed his intelligence officials to specifically combat Russian interference.” Until the government takes concrete steps toward eliminating the problem at its root, the integrity of future elections relies on those who control the outlets through which Russian agents will launch their attacks. And so far, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey have not proven to be the most trustworthy guardians of democracy.