In a fiery address on Friday, President Donald Trump took aim at the integrity of U.S. elections, disclosing intelligence that he claimed revealed significant Chinese meddling. His remarks stirred controversy by reviving baseless assertions that he was the rightful victor of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s charges about the “shocking vulnerabilities” of the American voting system seemed to be setting the stage for contesting this November’s pivotal U.S. midterm elections.
The remarks highlighted Trump’s intention to elevate election security as a pivotal political issue as the midterm elections loom, where Republicans risk losing their hold on the House and Senate — a scenario that would entail major political ramifications for Trump.
“We can never watch a stolen election again,” Trump declared in the primetime speech, referencing his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.
The former president further claimed to be declassifying vast troves of intelligence data, including details that China had unlawfully obtained 220 million U.S. voter files, positioning his accusation as part of a broader narrative against foreign interference.
“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,” Trump said in the televised speech from the White House.
He asserted that members of the US intelligence community deliberately suppressed information about the extent of China’s activities.
His allegations contradict an unclassified 2021 US intelligence community assessment that found no indications any foreign actor tried to alter or succeeded in altering “any technical aspect” of the 2020 presidential election vote.
The assessment was conducted under John Ratcliffe, then Trump’s director of national intelligence and now his CIA director.
Trump also claimed there were more than 250,000 non-US citizens registered to vote in four states.
Trump has persistently claimed his 2020 election defeat was “rigged,” although more than 60 lawsuits produced no ruling establishing fraud capable of changing the outcome, while recounts, audits and his own justice department found none.
Trump’s push to change US elections
After railing against election security in the 25-minute address, Trump pressed Republicans in Congress to pass his signature elections legislation, the SAVE America Act, which has been stalled for months.
It seeks to impose new voter identification and citizenship requirements, despite longstanding findings that voter fraud in US elections is rare.
Election security experts have said these measures would make it harder for millions of eligible voters to cast a ballot.
In his speech, Trump also said his administration, in light of the “brand new and irrefutable information I have revealed tonight”, would be taking swift action to work with states to ensure election integrity.
Critics have accused Trump of federal overreach by seeking to involve the federal government in the way elections are run in the US. Under the US constitution, the states are responsible for administering federal elections.
Instances of noncitizens voting in the US are extremely rare.
The conservative Heritage Foundation, which has close ties to the Trump administration, has identified just 99 cases of suspected noncitizen voting since 2000.
Trump has also sought to change the way elections are run through executive orders, though those have largely been blocked by the courts and struck down as unconstitutional.
Republicans are navigating political headwinds as the midterm elections approach, with Trump’s approval rating at near-record lows of less than 40 per cent and voters deeply frustrated by the Iran war and high energy prices.
Trump accused of seeking to tilt the scales
Democrats allege that Trump’s proposed electoral reforms are an effort to influence voting in the midterms in his favour.
Election security experts have warned that precedents set during the midterms could shape the outcome of the 2028 presidential election and beyond.
Emily Rodriguez, elections spokesperson for Protect Democracy, a US nonpartisan advocacy group, told SBS earlier this month the Trump administration is seeking to create a “fog of investigations” to justify tighter voting rules and set the stage to contest unfavourable results.
“It’s a pattern that recurs across backsliding democracies,” she said.
“An unpopular leader who still has to face voters doesn’t cancel elections outright — that’s too obvious — he tilts the field enough that a close race breaks his way and builds a pretext to dispute it if it doesn’t.”
Two of the three major US TV networks and CNN decided not to broadcast the primetime address on their primary platforms, departing from a practice typically reserved for major addresses on issues of national importance.
— With reporting by Reuters and Agence France-Presse