The News
US President Donald Trump used a primetime address on Thursday to allege sweeping vulnerabilities in the US election system, without providing any evidence of voter tallies being changed or election results being materially impacted.
Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Trump discussed recently declassified intelligence files that he said showed “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.” He described efforts by China to obtain voter files and influence the 2020 election results, and said that US voting machines and ballot counting systems are “vulnerable and easily compromised.”
At no point during the address did Trump provide specific evidence of the 2020 election result — which he has long refused to accept, given Joe Biden’s victory — being impacted, or specific votes being changed. The intelligence community had previously said that several foreign actors, including China, sought to interfere in the 2020 election but that there was no evidence of those efforts successfully changing the outcome.
Trump’s own cybersecurity chief described the 2020 election as “the most secure in American history” at the time, before he was fired by the president.
Nevertheless, Trump on Thursday described “an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it.” He said his administration would take “swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is swiftly protected,” without providing any details on what moves that would entail beyond saying that officials would work to patch “known vulnerabilities” ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
Trump also called for the passage of the SAVE America Act, a voter ID bill that has stalled on Capitol Hill due to lack of support. Senate Republican leaders have pushed back on Trump’s demands to do away with the filibuster in order to pass the bill, which currently can’t overcome the 60-vote threshold.
Trump used the speech to again tout last year’s tax bill, the stock market, and his administration’s work on border security. He only briefly mentioned the Iran conflict, saying the American public would learn the “fruits of that labor very very shortly.” The war has been unpopular among US voters, and the economic shocks caused by it have dragged down Trump’s approval ratings.
Notable
- ABC and NBC declined to carry Trump’s speech live, drawing ire from the president.
- Trump’s approval rating stands at 37% amid dissatisfaction of his handling of the Iran conflict and its effect on the economy, a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll found.