Democrats like talking about Russian election meddling more than anything else in the world. President Trump hates the topic more than any other.

What both sides have in common is that neither takes the threat seriously. They should.

The Senate Intelligence Committee just released a report revealing Russian efforts to interfere with our election far more widespread than we had previously known. While Democrats seemed most upset about their emails getting hacked, and while major media outlets seemed most upset about “fake news” being spread on Facebook, the truly scary story to come out of the Intelligence Committee’s report was Russian efforts to hack state election systems.

Russian malefactors systematically tried to hack into elections systems in all 50 states. They successfully penetrated the systems in some cases. In Illinois, for instance, Russians got so far they could have altered state voter rolls — but apparently didn’t. What’s unnerving is that there’s no doubt they’ll try again.

Given the contentiousness of current politics, the last thing we need is a presidential election tainted by foreign hacking. This is a serious issue that deserves a serious response on both the state and federal level.

Trump has, to his discredit, waved away the facts on Russian meddling. He apparently fears that giving credence to the story of Russian meddling in turn gives credence to Democrats and the media who want to discredit his victory.

Of course, Trump’s critics want to say he stole the election. Of course, they use the fact of Russian meddling to advance that claim. But their story is false: there’s no evidence Russians altered any votes or tampered with any vote tallies.

Trump is the president of the United States. He needs to be above worrying about his detractors. He needs to put national security interests above perceptions and his own ego, and he needs to robustly respond to the actions exposed by this Senate report.

First, he needs to rebuke Russian President Vladimir Putin both publicly and privately. Second, he needs to support U.S. intelligence and law enforcement in their efforts to detect and thwart Russian efforts in 2020.

That doesn’t mean Republicans should rubber stamp Democratic “election security” legislation, some of which amounts to a federal takeover of state election responsibilities — as if states have less incentive to preserve the integrity of their own elections.

We hope Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill and the states can see the importance of this issue and set aside their respective hangups in order to work together.

But Democrats (and frankly, some of the Intelligence Committee) have another hangup they need to get over. They need to acknowledge Russian meddling appears to have been at the very origin of the Mueller probe.

The Russia probe’s roots reach back to the salacious Steele dossier, which emanates from Fusion GPS, a Democratic research firm. We know that Fusion GPS worked alongside Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who has long been considered close to Russian intelligence.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller refused to answer any questions about the origins of the probe, which is too bad. Any serious accounting of Russian meddling would get to the bottom of Russia’s role in the Steele dossier.

Democrats want to use "Russia" as an excuse for losing an election. For that reason, Trump wants to deny there's a problem.

Both sides have to grow up and confront a common enemy.