“Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen,” said President Donald Trump in his Thursday address. He also said he revealed “brand new and irrefutable information,” indicating that China and other countries compromised U.S. elections.
However, this is far from first time that Trump has cried election fraud. Many are skeptical of his claims, which appear to be in conflict with previously released U.S. intelligence data.
According to an NPR report, Trump didn’t actually provide any “new evidence of a single fraudulent vote cast in any election,” though his administration did post documents online during the speech. NPR said many of those documents “did not appear to fully support sweeping claims the president made.”
Trump also said during his speech that: “If you look at voting today, it’s in such bad shape in so many states.” He’s also suggested that his own party take over elections in some states.
Trump’s claims about voter and election fraud go back to at least before the 2020 election, which he claimed was “stolen” from him by former President Joe Biden, though those claims have been debunked. In the wake of that election, Trump himself was accused of trying to overturn an election.
With these new claims, “Trump is reopening a politically charged debate over China’s role in the 2020 election while directly challenging U.S. intelligence assessments that concluded Beijing did not try to influence the election’s outcome,” said Axios.
It noted that, even “among the documents released on the White House website Thursday night was an early 2020 report saying it would be difficult to manipulate the outcome of an election.”
Still, Trump said during his speech that, “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.”
He also criticized mail-in voting, even though he has submitted mail-in ballots himself. At least two experts have pushed back on the claims from Trump’s address.
David Becker, an election law expert and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation & Research, told NPR that “I reviewed those documents. I’ve been working on this for quite some time. And if anything, yesterday’s release of documents confirmed that the 2020 election was not stolen.”
Ken Block, who wrote a book on his hunt for fraud in the 2020 election, said: “I do not believe it is vulnerable, no. In a decade and a half of looking at election data, I have never encountered evidence of massive fraud of any kind – which is not to say that we can’t improve our election system,” according to The Providence Journal.
Prior to this address, Trump faced criticism for firing the last Democratic members of the Election Assistance Commission, and the last Republican resigned. Axios also noted that Trump “has significantly reduced federal election-security infrastructure,” including employee cuts at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
“Vulnerabilities in voting systems are real and worth fixing,” Geoff Hale, a visiting fellow for election security at the Center for Democracy & Technology, wrote in a post published Wednesday. He also said that “claiming that vulnerabilities in voting systems exist is different from claiming that vulnerabilities in voting systems have been exploited.”
Following the speech, opinion pieces published in The Hill and USA Today criticized Trump’s message.
“Even as he falsely claims he wants to protect election integrity, Trump is working to rig elections in favor of his fellow Republicans,” said Scott Bolden in the piece published by The Hill.
In USA Today, Ingrid Jacques said that Americans are “sick” of relitigating the 2020 election and have more pressing concerns, like the economy. While inflation dropped last month, it is still up 3.5% for the past 12-month period and gas prices are climbing up again after falling when the U.S.-Iran peace deal was briefly in effect, according to AAA data.
U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, also blasted the speech in a statement.
“Tonight, Americans heard the president once again repeat claims about our elections that have been investigated for years and repeatedly rejected by the Intelligence Community, the FBI, DHS, DOJ, bipartisan state election officials, audits, recounts, and the courts. The facts have not changed,” said Warner. “As Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have spent years overseeing our nation’s efforts to defend against foreign meddling in our elections. China is a serious strategic competitor, and it absolutely seeks to advance its interests at America’s expense. So do Russia and Iran. We should confront those threats with facts, not distort them for political purposes.”
During his speech, Trump encouraged lawmakers to pass the stalled SAVE America Act, which would establish new voting requirements.
“I was proud to support the SAVE and Protect America Act because it begins the process of advancing priorities the American people overwhelmingly support – ensuring only eligible citizens vote in federal elections and providing our servicemembers with the resources they need to defend our nation,” said Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) after the president’s speech. He added that he plans to work on pushing the legislation through.
Trump’s speech comes with under four months to go until the November midterm elections. Earlier this week, Michael Waldman wrote in his weekly newsletter for the Brennan Center for Justice that “Trump’s drive to undermine the vote continues,” and that his efforts “grow more aggressive, more brazen,” as the elections draw nearer.
Projections updated Friday by Race to the White House showed that Democrats are currently forecast to take majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Though Trump has had the benefit of GOP majorities in both houses so far during his first term, some GOP initiatives (such as the SAVE America legislation) have failed to pass.
Looking to the midterms, CNBC even reported this week that “more voters would be more likely to support a democratic socialist candidate than a Make America Great Again supporter or a candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump,” based on the results of its CNBC All-America Economic Survey.
