WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0President Trump used a rare prime-time address Thursday night to renew his attacks on the security of U.S. elections, telling Americans that the nation\u2019s voting system is \u201cso broken\u201d that \u201cno one can possibly defend it,\u201d a striking effort by a sitting president to undermine public confidence in domestic elections.<\/p>\n
Trump asserted that the U.S. election system was \u201cdangerously\u201d exposed to potential foreign hacking, including by China, and said he had directed the White House to release a tranche of heavily redacted documents that purport to show \u201cvulnerabilities\u201d in the nation\u2019s voting system. <\/p>\n
But many of his claims, which echo his assertions after losing the 2020 election, have been debunked by investigations, audits or court proceedings. His warnings that the nation\u2019s elections could be vulnerable to foreign influence have long been made by members of both parties, and he made no claims Thursday that foreign actors had changed vote counts or hacked election systems. <\/p>\n
Trump amplified his assertions in an apparent effort to cast fresh doubt over what he said was a \u201cstolen\u201d and \u201crigged\u201d election and renew calls for Congress to pass a federal voting law ahead of the November election.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes levels never thought possible to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference,\u201d Trump claimed.<\/p>\n
The 26-minute address to the nation \u2014 a platform traditionally reserved for rare moments of national importance \u2014 comes after a series of steps by Trump in his second term to assert more federal control over elections <\/a>before the November midterm elections, which are less than four months away. <\/p>\n Last week, Trump fired all remaining members<\/a> of the bipartisan U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, a federal agency that helps states improve their voting systems and distributed election security grants to help protect state elections from foreign and domestic cyberattacks, among other things. <\/p>\n The Justice Department has also attempted to force states to turn over their voter rolls, an effort that more than a dozen courts have now ruled against, and said it would send election monitors to some states. Trump claimed states are refusing to turn over their voter rolls because he alleged noncitizens are registered to vote in their elections. <\/p>\n The president used California, a favorite target, to hint that Democrats were cheating. He cast doubt on California\u2019s vote count in June\u2019s primary election, saying, \u201cIt took a month to count the votes. I wonder what they were doing.\u201d <\/p>\n The state\u2019s vote count takes multiple weeks<\/a> under the current system; it is not a sign of fraud. <\/p>\n Trump delivered the address with his approval rating stagnating at 37%, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll<\/a> released Thursday, and with weakening enthusiasm among Republicans. <\/p>\n Democrats swiftly condemned Trump\u2019s claims as baseless and a rehash of ideas that have little to do with actual election administration.<\/p>\n \u201cDonald Trump is releasing unverified, meaningless documents to appease his own delusions about an election he lost resoundingly, all while continuing to withhold 3 million pages of the Epstein files,\u201d Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on X.<\/p>\n Multiple reviews of the 2020 election have concluded that Joe Biden won legitimately, and election experts say there is no evidence that widespread fraud affected the outcome of the election. Trump\u2019s own attorney general in his first term, William Barr, said at the time that his department found no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been more than half a decade, with numerous audits, recounts, and more than 60 court cases, each finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud,\u201d Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said of the 2020 election in a statement. \u201cClearly, this is no longer about an election Donald Trump lost six years ago. It\u2019s about him laying the groundwork to try to \u2018take over the voting\u2019 in the upcoming midterm elections.\u201d<\/p>\n Sue Gordon, who served as principal deputy director of national intelligence during Trump\u2019s first term, said most of the data Trump will release has already been assessed by the intelligence community. <\/p>\n \u201cSince 2016, the intelligence community has been saying that foreign actors intended to influence our election for the purpose of undermining democracy \u2014 not undermining a president, undermining democracy,\u201d Gordon told CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins <\/a>after the address. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a new threat. It was one he certainly knew of. He had an entire term to deal with it,\u201d Gordon said, \u201cand I don\u2019t know how you can believe that the same community who told him about it … then somehow didn\u2019t tell him about further attempts.\u201d<\/p>\n Major broadcast networks declined to air Trump\u2019s speech in full, instead reporting on it. Trump complained about NBC and ABC as he spoke, saying they should lose their broadcasting licenses. He falsely claimed that \u201cthey and others in the media are part of a plot\u201d to \u201ccontinue this fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n In his remarks, Trump alleged China carried out what is believed to be the \u201clargest compromise of election data history\u201d starting during the 2020 election cycle and claimed that \u201cmembers of the deep state\u201d in the American intelligence community covered it up.<\/p>\n Trump said China had accessed voter data of 220 million people in 18 states, but that information is generally publicly available and does not contain information that would allow a bad actor to change votes or hack into an election system.<\/p>\n He directed the FBI, the director of national intelligence and other agencies led by some of his loyalists to investigate and prosecute the people responsible for the alleged cover-up. <\/p>\n Foreign adversaries have made known attempts to influence election outcomes, but there is no evidence that adversaries have ever breached voting systems or altered votes, something that would be extraordinarily difficult to do without notice, elections experts told The Times this week.<\/p>\n Trump did not mention Russia, which has made attempts to influence U.S. elections through social media or disinformation. In 2016, Russia interfered in the presidential election in an attempt to sway the contest in Trump\u2019s favor, multiple U.S. assessments found<\/a> in the years following the election. <\/p>\n China was not found to have interfered with election processes or infrastructure in an intelligence report<\/a> released in March 2021, and the information Trump provided Thursday did not appear to contradict that.<\/p>\n The idea that China may have attempted to influence voters via social media or public statements is not new. In April 2020, an intelligence assessment determined<\/a> that Chinese intelligence officials analyzed voter registration data from multiple states, according to a report that was declassified in 2022.<\/p>\n