Exactly. (Edit: misread your post) Until the 2016 elections, Americans on the Left or Right were just (semi) friendly rivals occasionally jabbing each other on the shoulder. "How do you like that old sport!" as Democrats would name a school after Martin Luther King Jr. "Well how about one of these!" Republicans would say as they give teh military a raise.

But then our enemies saw an opportunity: "look at how much Americans depend on social media for their news... and look- there's a new guy on the political scene that has ties with us..." And suddenly hundreds of posts with Spongebob or Lisa Simpson or Spider-man standing in front of a chalkboard started appearing on everybody's timelines.

EDIT: No, it's not that a person isn't allowed to have personal political opinions. It's one of the small things that barely keeps us from becoming a Totalitarian country. It's the information that we ingest that is altered by the Russians/ Chinese.

https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/china-and-russia-are-joining-forces-to-spread-disinformation/

https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ira-propaganda-senate-report/

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2022/12/27/russia-china-web-wars-divide-americans/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/14/russia-us-politics-social-media-facebook

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA704-1.html