How Trump’s address bluntly aimed at destabilizing the US electoral system | Donald Trump
Donald Trump used his presidential power and U.S. intelligence agencies to undermine confidence in American elections in his presidential address on Thursday, clearly intended to set the stage for further destabilization of the electoral system ahead of November’s midterm elections.
In his speech in the East Room of the White House, Trump tried to give the impression that his administration had uncovered explosive new findings about vulnerabilities in the US election system. He claimed that China had illegally obtained voter information on 220 million Americans (many states allow anyone to purchase voter roll information; Trump did not say by what means the country obtained that data). He claimed that China intervened in other ways to undermine the 2020 campaign and that information was suppressed by intelligence officials.
Trump’s claims about vulnerabilities in the election had already been investigated by intelligence officials. high confidence He said that in 2021, China “made no interference efforts and considered but did not implement influence efforts aimed at changing the outcome of the US presidential election.” A minority view in the national intelligence officer’s public report on cyber argued: “China has taken at least some steps to undermine former President Trump’s re-election chances, primarily through social media and official press releases and the media.” But even the dissenting opinion concluded that “we have no information that China is attempting to interfere in election processes.”
The White House released some previously classified materials on Thursday in an attempt to try to refute that conclusion. But the documents were heavily redacted, making it difficult to assess exactly what they said. At least some of the documents released Thursday also appeared with undermine the idea That China intends to interfere in the 2020 elections. Conducting document review, CNN concluded There wasn’t much innovation in them. Rather than providing conclusive evidence, this statement appeared to be a return to Trump’s classic strategy of flooding the area with information in an attempt to muddy the waters and obscure what is true.
Trump also claimed that FBI officials investigated a voter polling operation in Muskegon, Michigan, and that pollsters admitted to submitting voter registration applications under fake names. Although it is unknown why the FBI did not file criminal charges, the incident did not result in illegitimate ballots being cast and was caught by the local clerk. The incident was made public Michigan Republicans and far-right website Gateway Pundit for years.
Trump said the Department of Homeland Security had identified more than 270,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in four states (there are more than 211 million people registered to vote in the U.S.), but he said nothing about how the agency goes about identifying noncitizens.
The US constitution does not give Trump any power over elections, instead giving that power to the states. But perhaps the worst line of his speech on Thursday came toward the end, when he said the Trump administration would take further steps to gain control over the election. He said the Department of Homeland Security would hold a briefing tomorrow to discuss vulnerabilities in state voting systems and order states to remove noncitizens from the rolls.
