Whenever someone from the liberal media footnotes in a Trump-Russia story that there’s no evidence that votes were changed, remember segments like this one from Tuesday’s Hardball that showed why, deep down, they’re still convinced that Russians were why Hillary Clinton lost the election.

During the Hardball Roundtable block on MSNBC, Washington Post reporter Eugene Scott dumped his supposed objectivity to join with former Clinton campaign official Adrienne Elrod in boisterously rejecting GOP strategist John Brabender, who argued that Russian hacking and social media trolls didn’t change one vote.

Host Chris Matthews tried to throw down with Brabender, but he offered nothing of substance besides the general notion that the evidence could change depending on the Mueller probe’s findings.

“No one's going to convince me a billion dollar was spent on this campaigns and with some — and with some memes they changed the outcome,” Brabender argued as Matthews shouted at him.

Brabender was eventually able to continue after more squabbling: “Look, here’s what the argument has been, what Russia has done to influence the election the argument is to release e-mails where Hillary Clinton was trying to scam the election from Bernie Sanders. That's what we're using as what the Russians successfully did?”

Elrod shouted that “[t]here was a lot more than just that” and Scott also joined in with the asinine connotation that Russian-backed social media trolls swung the election by depressing turnout:

EUGENE SCOTT: Yeah. There’s a lot more than — BRABENDER: Okay, so — SCOTT: — than what’s being said about. BRABENDER: Okay, so — SCOTT: One of the things that has been said is that through the factories — the troll factories, fake accounts have been put out that have — that were aimed at increasing, I'm sorry, decreasing turnout amongst particular demographics and that we do have data that some demographics did not vote especially in some of those swings states. BRABENDER: Yeah, but you’re combining those two. So, what you're basically saying, despite a billion dollars worth of advertising, despite all the network coverage and all the debates, some Russians somewhere put a meme on Facebook and — SCOTT: Not a meme. Lots of trolls — BRABENDER: — okay, that’s — that’s — SCOTT: — lots of memes, lots of tweets — BRABENDER: — that’s insulting. ELROD: No. SCOTT: — lots of fake news articles.

Brabender reiterated just how “insulting” that is “to voters” and halfheartedly wondered allowed how much Russian trolls spent on Facebook compared to the billions spent in the 2016 election. Nonetheless, Elrod and Scott kept pushing with the former emphatically stating that they “absolutely impacted the election” while Scott lashed out: “Did you see the memes? Did you see them?”

“The Democrats are right now like this sort of group where they need a drug to get — how did we lose this election and Russia — Russia is that drug. Russia is that drug,” Brabender responded.

To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on February 27, click “expand.”