US President Donald Trump claimed in a prime-time address that China was interfering in the 2020 election and that there were ‘shocking vulnerabilities’ in the US voting system.
Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Trump repeated baseless claims about voter fraud and foreign interference in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In a 30-minute speech delivered three months before the midterm elections, he said he had declassified hundreds of intelligence files supporting his claim that China tried to sway the election in Biden’s favor.
U.S. intelligence agencies previously concluded that China did not interfere in the 2020 election.
In response to his speech, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly denied the allegations of China’s interference in the 2020 presidential election, calling them “completely fabricated.”
Trump’s claims are “malicious slander that has long been proven to be baseless,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.
Trump spoke in front of several top team members during his speech, but reporters were not allowed to ask questions of the president.
In his remarks, he accused China of “illegally acquiring” 220 million voter files containing personal information.
Trump said voter data in 18 states had been “purchased, stolen and hacked by China” and accused “alarmed people” of failing to disclose the information to government officials or Congress.
Much voter data is publicly available., external And Trump did not provide any evidence in his speech that China used this information to change voting systems or influence the election results.
The White House released hundreds of pages of intelligence documents, many of them heavily redacted, during Trump’s speech. The BBC is reviewing this.
Meanwhile, Democrats have accused Trump of trying to sow doubt about the security of the upcoming midterm elections in November, which will determine control of Congress for the remainder of the president’s term.
“Let’s be clear: In America, voters choose their leaders, not the other way around,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on social media after the speech.
“Democrats will fight like hell to ensure that every American voter can vote freely without interference or interference from Donald Trump,” he added.
The president’s comments contradict previous assessments by U.S. intelligence agencies. A 2021 report from the U.S. National Intelligence Council said it had “high confidence” that China did not interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
“We assess that China did not engage in interference efforts and did not consider but deploy any influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election,” the report said.
This was probably because China “did not consider any election result to be favorable enough to warrant a counterattack if China were caught,” he said.
Trump spoke from the White House after the release of a new poll conducted by the Washington Post-Ipsos that found his approval rating had fallen to 37% while many voters were pessimistic about the cost of living and the war with Iran.
Elsewhere in the speech, the president argued that America’s voting machines are “extremely exposed” to interference from foreign adversaries, including Russia, China and Iran.
The shortcomings of America’s election infrastructure are well documented. Some issues were addressed after the 2016 election, which Trump won. The U.S. intelligence community dealt with Russia after discovering that it had engaged in a coordinated election interference campaign that included hacking, influence operations on social media, and funding of on-the-ground campaign activities.
In his speech, President Trump claimed that an investigation by Michigan law enforcement uncovered a voter registration fraud scheme by a Democratic-affiliated group, but stopped the FBI from taking action before the statute of limitations expired.
He offered no evidence that votes or votes were changed or voting machines were hacked, but said, “It was pay, play and cheating.”
Separately, President Trump said that the Department of Homeland Security had confirmed that 278,000 non-citizens were registered to vote. He did not say whether any of those people voted or influenced the outcome of the election.
At the end of his speech, Trump again called for passage of the SAVE America Act, which would ban most mail-in voting and require proof of citizenship and photo ID to register to vote.
The bill has been pending in the Senate for months.
