Russians incitement and organizational advice raised the numbers and zealotry of people, training them and motivating them to be activists, that in turn scared the politicians, especially when Russian trolling and internet activity made the numbers of activists look much larger than they actually are. (We saw how bots supported the false assumption that there were large numbers of potential boycotted against Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers, causing the advertisers to become afraid of losing customers and drop his show... until he demonstrated what the activists were doing to inflate their numbers.) And the racial division incited by Russia ( and Cuba and the Dems themselves) pleased some of them, since some definitely benefited from it.
Like the Arab Spring. Classic Black Ops.