After almost six years of promises to imminently reveal evidenceirrefutable claims of election manipulation of 2020, President Donald Trump withdrew again on Thursday.
In a prime-time presidential address that the White House and his Republican allies said would present shocking findings following a thorough reexamination of law enforcement and intelligence files, Trump never claimed to have evidence of altered votes or compromised machines. Instead, it described “vulnerabilities” in the electoral infrastructure, without alleging that those weaknesses had been exploited. “They are vulnerable and can be easily compromised,” Trump said, referring to electronic voting machines.
“Our elections were exposed to being manipulated and stolen”he added, using softer language than his usual insistence that the 2020 elections were rigged and stolen. It accused China of illicitly acquiring records of American voters, including names, addresses, phone numbers and political affiliation, information that is in the public domain. Two former senior U.S. officials said there is no evidence or information to indicate that the Chinese government hacked or compromised state voter registration systems in 2020. In the process, Trump may have angered Chinese leaders, whom he courted hard during a visit to Beijing in May.
Trump did not mention several issues that his allies had anticipated he would address. He did not offer any news about the federal investigations of 2020 voting records in Georgia and Arizonanor about recent FBI interviews with former election officials in Milwaukee. It cited a Department of Homeland Security report that said authorities had discovered large numbers of noncitizens registered to vote in California and three other states. However, the administration did not present evidence to support this claim. Previous accusations about noncitizen voting have often not stood up to rigorous scrutiny.
Much of the speech focused on intelligence reports that Trump said were hidden from him during his presidency and from the public in 2020. He claimed the reports indicated China wanted to undermine his re-election, although he did not claim China had taken steps to manipulate the election results. Raw intelligence reports are often erroneous, incomplete or contradictory, and spy agencies rely on the judgment of expert analysts to verify and compile information and reach conclusions with varying degrees of certainty. In 2020, officials disagreed over whether China wanted Trump’s defeat and whether Beijing had taken steps to undermine him, a controversy mentioned in a declassified 2021 report.
This report described the conI conclude that neither China nor any other foreign actor had manipulated any votes. The hundreds of pages of documents posted online by the White House during Trump’s speech did not appear to support Trump’s claim that China interfered in the 2020 election to try to defeat him, or that U.S. intelligence officials deliberately withheld information from him about Beijing’s intentions. The reports, some of which are heavily censored, show that China acquired millions of American voter records — a fact that has long been known — and planned to influence American politics in its favor.
A report ofe CIA undated, based In sensitive intelligence information collected between 2018 and 2020, he claimed that the Beijing government wanted Trump to “lose the next election.” However, it described China as using political and economic influence, not hacking elections. Another CIA report, dated July 2020, claimed that Chinese cyber agents were attacking Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign, not Trump’s. According to the report, US intelligence agencies concluded that “China has no intention of currently covertly interfering to attempt to influence the election outcome, although this activity could facilitate such operations.”
Several of the documents show intelligence officials arguing over how to present China’s actions, something common in intelligence analysis. A March 2021 report from the prestigious National Intelligence Council, published more than five years ago, concluded that Beijing did not attempt to influence the outcome of the 2020 election. A senior official disagreed, saying China took “at least some steps” to undermine Trump’s re-election chances.
The White House briefed right-wing allies and media figures on Monday about plans for Trump’s speech, fueling online anticipation, including speculation that Trump would go so far as to declare Georgia’s Democratic senators illegitimate or release new evidence of Chinese interference.
When that failed to materialize, Trump supporters emphasized accusations of a cover-up by intelligence services or attacked news networks for not airing the speech. “This data shows a cultural stain on the intelligence community,” John Solomon, a pro-Trump journalist who advised the White House on the release of the documents, said on the talk show online from former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon after the speech. NBC and ABC’s decision not to interrupt their prime programming to broadcast the speech live clearly irritated Trump, who attacked them by name and called on the government to revoke their licenses. Fox News and CBS broadcast the speech live.
Trump concluded his speech by reiterating his demand that Congress pass stricter rules on voter identification and citizenship. Senate Republicans say they lack the necessary votes. ““That election was a closed issue in 2020,” dSenate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, said Wednesday. “I’m not looking at the past. I’m looking at the future.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt rejected criticism that the president should focus on voters’ priorities, such as the economy.
He added that advisers had talked about addressing other issues, such as the war with Iran and the economy. Trump spent the first six minutes of his speech arguing that his administration had secured the southern border, deported criminals, cut taxes and lowered prescription drug prices. He suggested the war with Iran would be won “very soon” and highlighted the slowdown in inflation last month, although many analysts and investors expect the collapse of the ceasefire with Iran to push prices higher again.
Trump said his administration would work with state and local officials to protect voter data, fix technical vulnerabilities and remove noncitizens from voter rolls. Democratic governors responded by accusing him of trying to undermine public confidence in the election. “Tonight, Americans heard the president once again repeat claims about our elections that have been investigated for years and repeatedly rejected,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.).
“The greatest danger to our elections right now is the false narratives being used here at home as a pretext to convince Americans that their elections cannot be trusted, or worse, to justify unprecedented federal intervention in elections that the Constitution entrusts to the states.” Democrats also argued that Trump’s obsession with his defeat six years ago would hurt him with voters, who increasingly disapprove of his handling of the war with Iran and the economy.
Tonight, Americans heard the president once again repeat claims about our elections that have been investigated for years and repeatedly rejected.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared that Trump was preparing to undermine or challenge the results of the midterm elections. “Tonight Trump made a pathetic attempt to deny what we all know to be true: he lost the 2020 election,” Schumer declared after the speech. “The American people were fed up with Donald Trump then and are even more so now as he drives up prices, sows chaos in the streets, and enriches their friends and family through rampant corruption.”
Trump spoke in the East Room before about 55 people, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, FBI Director Kash Patel and Acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte. When the broadcast ended, the audience erupted in applause, and Trump joked with the group about voter fraud, the country’s 250th anniversary and other topics for about 20 minutes.