At 2:30pm on Thursday, Democratic Representative Maxine Waters of California, was on the floor of the House of Representatives, arguing for the importance of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"At this time," Waters said, "with a bill that would basically take our cop on the block, the SEC, and literally obliterate ..."

Alas, politics junkies, news editors and anyone else who was watching the broadcast online did not learn how that sentence ended. Waters was cut off. Instead, they heard the jangling music of a feed from Russia Today, a state-run Russian television network that has been accused of helping its government interfere in the US election.

Some users of social media immediately assumed that the interruption, which lasted about 10 minutes, had nefarious implications.