Among the claims of the prime time address, the president argued that China meddle with elections, voting machines and other infrastructure has serious vulnerabilities
In a 9 p.m. address, President Donald Trump alleged serious claims of election interference from China, as well as other vulnerabilities of election infrastructure including with regards to voting machines. To substantiate his claims President Trump announced that he declassified documents that cover from 2018 to 2026 and were gathered by the White House and several security and intelligence agencies.
“America is back and doing really well but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed because no country could be great without fair and honest elections. You have to trust your country because if there can be no trust, there can be no greatness,” Trump said and announced that he was ordering several investigations on the issues.
The president grouped the allegations in four separate claims: Vulnerabilities in the Electronic Ballot System, China’s Acquisition and Exploitation of American Voter Data, Michigan Voter-Registration Investigation, and Noncitizens on State Voter Rolls. The documents are available for download at the White House webpage, although some documents are heavily redacted.
When it came to China, Trump claimed that since 2018 China has illegally obtained 220 million electoral files, including personal information of voters, and that interfered to either force Trump to resign or for him to lose the 2020 election. Trump went on to insist that “the deep state” covered up China’s interference and that 18 states were affected.
Trump also took aim at the press. President Trump alleged that China paid large sums of money to journalists that wrote negative stories about Trump. A CIA note states, “The Chinese Government sought to identify U.S. journalists who had reported negatively on the U.S. President and pay them to write more negative articles about him.” However, there’s no additional context, confirmation or proof that any agreements with journalists actually took place.
Trump also claimed that the Department of Homeland Security found 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote, but he expects the number to be higher because Democratic states did not share voter registration data.
As for the electronic voting systems, Trump claimed that government officials had long known that voting machines and websites that have voter data “are extremely exposed to attack.”
“CISA’s findings highlight the reality that election-related software, like all complex software, contains vulnerabilities that require timely remediation. While past partnerships with election vendors enabled early identification of security weaknesses prior to product release, structural constraints in the certification ecosystem significantly limit vendors’ abilities to patch systems quickly,” reads an Election Report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
The speech concluded with Trump urging Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require a federal voter registration system, proof of citizenship for eligibility, restrictions to mail-in ballots and a federal ID mandate. This Wednesday, the House of Representatives attached the SAVE Act to an appropriations bill in an attempt to send to the Senate as part of a budget bill in a format that would be protected from the filibuster.
