President Trump Exposes America’s Election Integrity Disaster

President Donald Trump delivered an address to the nation on July 16 that focused on the insecurity of American federal elections. He announced that previously classified CIA and FBI assessments of foreign interference in US elections would be made available on the White House website. According to the president, China has been the greatest threat to election integrity in the US.

The president’s main points were that China’s attacks on American elections have, in the past, been covered up by individuals within the US government and that voting machines are incredibly vulnerable to hackers.

Usual Suspects: The Deep State

“The documents cover five major areas of concern,” the president explained. “First, they show that, over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China’s illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files.” The president continued to expand:

“Compounding the travesty, the second set of documents we are releasing reveals that members of the Deep State – very, very, famous group of people, in many cases – in our intelligence agency worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling – covering it up from both the president and the American people like nobody thought was possible.”

Questioning the legitimacy of the certified 2020 presidential election result, which showed Joe Biden prevailed, is a taboo subject, even within right-leaning media circles. Still, if the sanctity of elections matters – as it should – then being afraid to question results, if there is legitimate reason to do so, should never be forbidden if election integrity is truly valued.

“As the documents we are releasing show,” Trump continued, “CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, ‘in mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party’s policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the US president in an effort to reduce the US president’s votes and make him resign or prevent his reelection.’”

Foreign Threat to Election Integrity

Mr. Trump also claims the documents show the Chinese were seeking out American journalists who were critical of him to “pay them large sums of money to write more negative articles about him – as many as they could, and they didn’t care what they said.”

More seriously, the president stated that FBI intelligence gathering uncovered an attempt by China to manufacture ballots for Joe Biden. “Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China’s election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing,” Trump said.

The president also revealed that the vulnerability of electronic voting machines – vociferously denied by Democrats – was, in fact, even worse than had been suspected.

Trump called for investigations and accountability. It is fair to say there has been very little of the latter so far. He also used all these revelations to push the passage of the SAVE America Act, of course. He pointed out that the only reason for opposing election integrity measures is “you want to cheat.”

Elected Democrats were visibly rattled in the hours before Trump’s address. Their reactions to it will be telling. As the president himself made clear, election integrity should not be a partisan issue. There is no reason why any Democrat or any Republican should oppose any reasonable measure to ensure elections are free of nefarious activities. Trump’s address, perhaps more than anything else, was a laying down of the gauntlet in the run-up to the November midterm elections.