President Donald Trump tried to convince Americans in a primetime address Thursday night that their elections are vulnerable to fraud and need immediate attention. While he did not repeat his frequent mantra that he actually won the presidential election he lost in 2020, Trump did declassify documents he said showed an influence campaign by China, a coverup by US intelligence officials and fraud in Michigan
The evidence, offered mostly in highly redacted out-of-context emails, did not live up to those claims. But it will certainly be grist for Trump’s efforts to curtail mail-in voting and add new voter ID requirements
The speech, along with context, is below
Good evening. Before we begin, I’m proud to report that our country is safer, stronger, and far wealthier than it has ever been before. We are doing great. Less than two years ago, we inherited an economic and social disaster after the worst inflation in 48 years, the wide open borders with millions and millions of people pouring in from all over the world, including criminals of all types, and 11,888 murderers, many of whom killed more than one person
We had transgender for everybody, men in women’s sports, crime ravaging our cities, and the whole world was laughing at us as a nation, but not anymore. Two years ago, our country was dead. Now, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. America is respected like we have never been respected before
This speech was billed as a major address on election security. It’s starting with some standard Trump talking points
We have more money being invested in the United States than at any time in the history of our country. More Americans are working today than ever before. This week, it was announced that inflation saw the largest monthly decline in more than six years, just happened. It was just given out. The media reported it and we accept it, the best in six years
The tax cuts in our Great Big Beautiful Bill are saving hardworking families thousands and thousands of dollars, like with the provisions, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors, along with the interest deduction on a loan used to purchase a car, but only if that car is made in America
And a 100 percent expensing for our job-creating businesses. Our stock markets are at their highest point in many years, but we can actually say of all time. And your 401(k)s, pensions and retirement accounts are setting records every single day, the highest in history. For years we paid the highest price for prescription drugs anywhere in the world
Now we pay the lowest price under my Most-Favored-Nations policy, because I was able to get the rest of the world and the pharmaceutical companies to act responsibly. Drug prices are coming down by 70, 80 and 90 percent. Trumprx.gov, this will ultimately reduce the cost of health care. You have to go to Trumprx.gov and take advantage of it. But the cost of health care is coming way down because of what we’ve done with prescription drugs
And with Trump accounts, every child in America now has access to a tax free investment account to save for their future. Billions and billions of dollars are being invested, put in by companies and individuals to take care of our children, so that at age 18, they will have potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in their account, and they’ll get off to a great start in life
So for that, go to Trumpaccounts.gov and sign up your child or any child you’d like to sign up. Our previously wide open borders have been transformed into the most secure borders in the history of our country, with zero illegal aliens being admitted to the United States in the past 14 months. That is zero
Nobody thought it was possible. We had the worst border in the history of our country, and now we have the best
Many of Trump’s claims above have been the subject of CNN reporting. I recently talked to CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez about the crackdown on immigration, illegal and otherwise, in the US. She told me it’s an overstatement to say that zero people have crossed into the country illegally. But certainly the number has dropped under Trump. Still waiting for the election meat of this speech
Crime is plummeting nationwide, with the murder rate at its lowest level since 1900 – or more than 125 years ago. We’re making a record investment in our armed forces, and we have the strongest and most powerful military by far anywhere in the world. I built it during my first term and, unfortunately, we’re forced to use it now. We won in Venezuela, which is now working with us to produce millions and millions of barrels of oil
We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly. America is back and doing really well. But we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed, because no country can 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
And that’s very simple — no trust, no greatness. For many years I’ve called for bold, swift and decisive action to protect the integrity of America’s elections. Every American deserves to know that, when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately in a system, and that is to make that system secure
One where cheating and interference are not just difficult, but virtually impossible. Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard. Tonight, I’m announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure
“Vulnerabilities” are different than evidence of interference
This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes, like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference. Just as disturbingly, this vital information has for many years been covered up and hidden from you, the American people — our beautiful, our great American people
But that all changes right now. The documents we will release starting tonight have been gathered by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, a great group of people, along with the staff of the president’s Intelligence Advisory Board, supported by our top intelligence agency chiefs who have all personally reviewed the findings we are presenting this evening and fully confirmed their authenticity
You can see these documents for yourself at whitehouse.gov, that’s whitehouse.gov, go check it out. Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in elections, but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly, and that’s what we’re doing
The documents cover five major areas of concern. First, they show that, over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files
This is indeed an alarming disclosure if the US Intelligence Community fears China is compiling information on US voters. It’s important to note, however, that there is general information on US voters publicly available or available for purchase from states
That information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences and other sensitive data that would be needed to register to vote and engage in other nefarious activities, which is exactly what was happening. This data loss presents an unprecedented election security nightmare. The intelligence even shows that China assigned a data exploitation unit specifically to this new project
CNN’s Izzy Lippolis writes: “A foreign adversary can learn a lot about Americans from accessing US voter rolls. And it creates a real possibility of chaos on Election Day, if the foreign actor somehow accesses live databases and starts manipulating entries. But the US has never accused China of tainting or deleting voter records.”
Compounding the travesty, the second set of documents we are releasing reveals that members of the Deep State — a very, very famous group of people, in many cases — in our intelligence agency, worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling, covering it up from both the president and the American people like nobody thought was possible
This is a bold accusation. The official intelligence assessment suggested Russia and Iran were more actively trying to influence the 2020 presidential election
US spy agencies began learning about the compromise of voter registration files in 2020, when they discovered that tens of millions of voter data — think of that, tens of millions of voters’ data — in 18 states have been bought, stolen or hacked by China. Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden
It would be important to know how much was bought versus stolen or hacked
They did not disclose to me as president or to anyone else. And to the best of our knowledge, they did not inform Congress. In fact, all they kept saying is, this is the most secure election in the history of our country — a standard, very pat line that was divvied out to say
He says this in a mocking tone as if it’s not true. CNN’s Marshall Cohen has reported extensively about US elections and explains why they are still viewed to be more secure than those in other countries. From Cohen:Unlike many countries, American elections are administered by thousands of state and local officials – as opposed to a centralized federal agency that could be vulnerable to foreign cyberattacks or internal manipulation from the incumbent president
The cover up of this colossal security breach is even more disturbing in light of the additional information showing that China engaged in other election-related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign
They did not want — and they just didn’t want it. They fought like hell not to have it, Donald Trump to win, and for good reason. As the documents we are releasing show, CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, in mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party’s policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the US president in an effort to reduce the US president’s votes and make him resign or prevent his reelection
Isn’t that nice? Also, in mid-2018, China was working to influence the results of the US midterm elections and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself. Separately, in mid-2019, the Chinese government’s strategy against the United States was focused on undermining domestic confidence in the US president
This is not what the official Intelligence Community assessment concluded after assessing all of the material related to the 2020 election. The intelligence services agreed that China, rather than actively fighting to block Trump from winning, did not try to interfere in the election because they felt such meddling would not be worth the risk. Read more from CNN’s Sean Lyngaas
They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn’t so hot, when actually your president has done a great job. And they did everything possible to do exactly that. Going on this document says, and this is by the CIA, the strategy included efforts to use Chinese contacts with big US companies to influence US business leaders to turn against the president of the United States of America
Trump’s approval rating in mid-2019 was hovering in the high ‘30s and low ‘40s
The Chinese government sought to identify US journalists who had reported negatively on the US president and pay them large sums of money to write more negative articles about him, as many as they could and they didn’t care what they said. The Chinese government wanted US president to lose the next election
This is true, according to the Intelligence Community assessment. China did prefer a Trump loss in 2020. So did Russia and Iran, two other countries that were also identified as trying to influence in the election
And the reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them. Charged them billions and billions of dollars’ worth of tariffs and built the strongest military anywhere in the world. We have the strongest military anywhere in the world. These are exact quotes from the CIA reporting. The name of the person doing the quote is now under review, but it gets even worse
Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, yet buried by rogue bureaucrats, stated that China’s activities even included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden. Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China’s election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing
Unverified intelligence is frequently incorrect, as Trump well knows from refuting the infamous dossier that included unverified claims about him. It’s important to note he uses that phrase here. There’s no evidence that China actually sought to manufacture ballots
These were briefings I would get almost every day; everything was kept out that was of importance. One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had, quote, deliberately massaged the presidential daily briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election. Another official inside the FBI wrote that she was running, quote, a shadow government, unquote, to keep intelligence about China’s election meddling from becoming known and to keep it away from the honorable press.
Trump is essentially alleging a coverup here. It will be interesting to see how or whether the administration pursues this inside the Intelligence Community
Other officials who witnessed such efforts perceived the motivations to be blatantly political. Recently, we found significant numbers of burn bags information, and this is a group of bags that were used to destroy information, given by President Barack Hussein Obama to be burned, it was supposed to be burned
These bags were supposed to be at a different level by different people, incinerated and checked, but it never happened. Maybe we got lucky. We believe this was not done on purpose, but rather through gross incompetence of the people that were supposed to burn the bags. But the findings are stunning
Burn bags! Obama! That is meant to sound very bad. But it’s extremely hard to follow what he’s trying to say here and there is nothing immediately evident about black bags in the released documents. What was in the bags? How do we know Obama had anything to do with them?
Today, I’m asking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI and the CIA to investigate how and why such crucial information was hidden. To fire those involved in the cover up and to file criminal charges, if appropriate, against these people
Trump recently appointed a fellow election denier, Bill Pulte, as acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte is a housing official and has no background in intelligence gathering. Trump’s nominee to be a permanent DNI is Jay Clayton, who is currently US Attorney for the Southern District of New York
Yet concealing China’s meddling was only the beginning. The third set of documents we are releasing proves that for many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems, dishonest, almost all
The emails released by the White House are heavily redacted. Officials repeatedly try to make clear their belief that China is not actively trying to interfere in the election. Follow along with CNN’s team reading the newly released documents
They’re vulnerable and they’re easily compromised and people within our government knew that. Tonight, we’re publishing a series of previously classified US intelligence community assessments and other reports proving that our government has long known these machines are extremely exposed to attack. As one assessment states, we judge that the United States’ adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state groups have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure.
That’s unquote but that’s some statement, isn’t it, made by supposedly great patriots of our country? The document goes on to further state that, quote, we assess that centralized election-related data repositories, such as voter registration databases, poll books, and other official election websites are most vulnerable to exploitation, and adversaries could use this access to these systems to disrupt election processes within the United States of America
Trump is likely overstating things here. The US election system is completely decentralized. Each state runs its own elections in its own way and with different systems. Which is not to say that maintaining election security should not be a priority
Tonight, we’re releasing all of those findings and spanning from January 2020 to June 2026. This is a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of our democracy. Many people have questioned whether it could actually be possible to electronically manipulate vote totals or change election results on these terrible machines
Today, we are releasing documents that show the CIA obtained reporting of a specific plot to do a big number in favor of the corrupt Maduro regime in Venezuela, and that’s exactly what happened, conspiring to digitally rig their own country’s elections in 2020. And that’s what they did. This reporting included precise details about methods to regime develop, to digitally alter vote totals in ways that could not be detected, even with an audit, no matter how deep they went
There is no evidence this plot was ever carried out, but it is certainly true that elections in Venezuela have been disputed and questioned
This intelligence underscores why we must take urgent action to ensure that our own system can never, ever be hacked or compromised like it was in the past. The fourth set of documents reveals that even when significant evidence of fraud has been detected, it has been buried and covered up. Among the disclosures tonight are FBI files detailing evidence of alleged fraud by a large scale voter registration operation in Michigan
What action, exactly? Trump doesn’t say. So stay tuned
In 2020, Michigan State Police raided a Democrat Get Out the Vote Organization, corrupt group in Muskegon, and were so concerned by what they found. They were just so concerned, they couldn’t believe it, actually, that they contacted the FBI in Detroit. The documents state that some canvassers admitted to FBI agents that they signed voter registration forms in other people’s names, submitted fraudulent registration for people who did not exist, and received gift cards tied to their number of applications that they produced.
In other words, it was pay, play and cheat. The FBI agents working on the case believe that crimes were committed, yet the Biden Department of Justice slow-walked the investigation and killed it. Tonight, I’m asking the FBI director to ensure that the matter is fully investigated and to work with the Department of Justice to prosecute those responsible for any crimes
According to local reporting at the time, no ballots were issued as a result of this incident. Will this speech kick off a follow-up investigation? Trump was president in October of 2020 and his Attorney General at the time said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud despite efforts to find it
Finally, to reveal just how vulnerable our elections continue to be, we are releasing the results of a stunning investigation by the Department of Homeland Security. According to the DHS review, state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections
CNN’s Tierney Sneed, Fredreka Schoutan and Betsy Klein note: “… the data-matching program Trump cited is known to present an inflated number of suspected non-citizens, in part because naturalized citizens are often flagged wrongly as non-citizens. The agreement that DHS has entered with states that use the program – SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) – to vet their rolls warns that they must do their own due diligence in reviewing the results, in compliance with the law, before using it for voter purges.”
Since Democrat states refuse to share their voter files the real number is actually much higher than that. Yet even this limited analysis found more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote. Put together, these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible
Despite his earlier claim to the contrary, the bottom line of this speech seems to be to undercut Americans’ confidence in their election system. But Trump does not ever say that votes were not properly cast or counted
Hundreds of millions of US voter files are in the hands of foreign governments. Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption. China and other countries have been trying to meddle in our elections. Evidence of fraud has been buried. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls
And yet we still have elections with no voter ID, no proof of citizenship, and tens of millions of ballots floating aimlessly through the mail. As one example of the insanity, California’s recent election for mayor of LA and governor, was held on June 2nd, long time ago, but it was just completed a few days ago, on July 10th. Think of that, much more than one month
Most states do have some form of voter ID requirement. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote and there’s little evidence that they do. Each state is different, but each mail-in ballot in every state is attached to a specific voter
Took a month to count the votes. I wonder what they were doing. This is worse than any third world country. There’s no third world country that has elections like we have
Everyone can agree that California can do better to count ballots faster. One issue is that it accepts ballots postmarked by Election Day but received later on. The Supreme Court recently declined to ban that practice
In a rare move, NBC and ABC fake news have both said that they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about, because of the fact that they don’t like the topic, because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it. They and others in the media are part of a plot
Those networks, like CNN, did not carry the speech live given Trump’s history of saying false things about elections. But not carrying a speech live is different than not covering it. You’re reading this annotation right now
They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. They can’t have a great country and that’s true; you can’t have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multibillion dollar in value airways for absolutely no money
They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in reporting. They pay nothing for multi-billion dollar assets. Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue
One thing Trump has not said is that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from him. He believes it and says routinely that he actually won the 2020 election, but interestingly does not say it here
Every American, whether you’re a Republican, Democrat, independent or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the most secure, honest, and fair election system anywhere in the world. Secure elections should be a partisan — really, should just, we should be together Democrats, Republicans, independents, everybody, and it should not be a partisan issue
It should cause to unite us, not to divide us. This should be a cause, we should be united, not divided. In light of the brand new and irrefutable information, I have revealed tonight my administration is in the process of notifying the states whose election data was compromised by the People’s Republic of China and many others
We will be working closely to mitigate any harm and we’re taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again
It’s quite a leap from bought or hacked voter roll data to stolen election. Nothing released by the White House for this speech suggests a stolen election
Tomorrow, the Secretary of Homeland Security will hold a briefing to outline his department’s recent work confirming cyber vulnerabilities in our electronic voting systems
They are bad. We’re in the process of informing governors, Senators and members of Congress of potential issues in their states. If you look at voting today, it’s in such bad shape in so many states, and we are committing to fix it and we’re also committing to be working with those states and local jurisdictions to help them fix and patch known technical vulnerabilities before the midterm elections
The needed context here is that Trump recently fired members of the Election Assistance Commission, which was created by Congress to help states administer secure elections
We have very important elections coming up. We want those elections to be honest. I’ve also ordered DHS to notify every state about noncitizens on their voter rolls and direct them to remove all ineligible voters from the lists immediately. But most importantly, addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the SAVE America Act. How easy is that to do, unless you want to cheat
The only reason you wouldn’t do it is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad, and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get away or can’t get elected any other way. This landmark bill requires that all voters must show photo voter ID. How simple is that? Could I have your photo, please? Photo voter ID. All voters must provide proof of citizenship
The House passed this legislation, but it does not have the support of all Republicans in the Senate, which means it has no path to becoming law this year. One Republican, Sen. Thom Tillis, says the bill is impossible to implement this year and threatened to block the bill if Republicans try to cram it through in this Congress.“I have been trying to explain for nearly a year that the SAVE Act, whether it’s the SAVE Act, the SAVE America Act, the new SAVE legislation that’s being proposed in the House, SAVE goes to Hollywood, SAVE goes to Hawaii, whatever the sequels are, all of them are fundamentally flawed and impossible to implement by this election,” Tillis recently said on the Senate floor.
Are you a citizen of our country, please? And hopefully there will be no corrupt mail-in ballots, which, if you watched California and so many other places, mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt. So, you would have no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment, or travel if you’re going away on business or vacation
Many statesallow some form of mail-in voting and some states, including the entire West Coast and Utah, do most of their elections by mail. There’s no evidence of widespread fraud in mail balloting
These reforms are urgently needed to stop the vulnerabilities that I’ve mentioned. To all Americans, I ask you to pick up your phone tomorrow, call your Representatives in the House and Senate and demand that they pass the SAVE America Act without delay. Together, we will restore faith and confidence in our country, and we will be bigger, better and stronger than ever before
Thank you. God bless you. God bless our great military. And God bless America. Thank you very much
