Americans are called to the polls next November for the highly anticipated midterm elections, legislative elections that could return control of both chambers of Congress to the Democrats and greatly complicate the President's agenda in his final two years in power. Donald Trump's popularity is at an all-time low, polls are unpromising for Republicans, and recent local and state-level elections have been devastating. This largely explains last night's speech, in which the president of a nation at war and plagued by inflation once again cast all possible doubts on the electoral system, speaking of conspiracies, massive fraud, and interference on a level unprecedented in China's history to prevent his reelection.
A maneuver that is contextualized by looking at the past and its traumas, is explained by looking at the current numbers and the need to regain the narrative, but can only be understood by thinking about the future. Critics of the president have long warned of maneuvers to discredit the electoral system in general and the systems for voter registration, the machines used by many states, or the mail-in ballots in particular. The same voices now denounce that Trump has taken it a step further, paving the way for a possible declaration of a national emergency before the vote in a few months. This could lead to the deployment of the National Guard or immigration services in polling stations, as last night the White House presented a figure that experts consider impossible (since in all audits conducted to date in all states governed by both parties, only a few dozen or hundred irregular cases have been found) of up to 278,000 non-citizen foreigners allegedly registered to vote.
Or for agencies controlled by the president to interrupt recounts or seize machines alleging suspicions of fraud or hacking. "This is worse than any third world country. There is no third world country that has elections like we do," he pointed out in his speech.
The spirit of the speech was already known before it was delivered. Trump has been talking about fraud since he lost, and has never accepted the defeat, which was by seven million votes, against Joe Biden during the pandemic. He repeats the mantra practically every day, filed dozens of lawsuits at the time, and has fueled all kinds of conspiracy theories and encouraged organizations aligned with that idea. That's why the country's main networks chose not to broadcast the national address live, not wanting to participate in a maneuver that seeks to cast doubt on future processes. Even the most supportive of the president, like Fox, were cautious. The Rupert Murdoch-owned network paid $787 million in the previous term to settle a defamation lawsuit with the voting machine company after giving credence to Trump's legal team's theories.
"Tonight, I announce the declassification and immediate release of crucial intelligence information revealing alarming vulnerabilities in our electoral infrastructure. This evidence shows that our electoral system is dangerously exposed, to levels never before imagined, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference. Most worrying is that this vital information has been covered up and hidden for many years. The documents we will release starting tonight have been compiled by the Government Transparency Task Force of the White House, an excellent group of people, along with the president's Intelligence Advisory Council staff, with the support of the heads of our major intelligence agencies, who have personally reviewed the findings. We present them tonight and fully confirm their authenticity," Trump said. "Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken trust in the elections, but to earn it by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them quickly, and that is precisely what we are doing," he added.
His speech was a mix of lies, exaggerations, half-truths, and the classic conspiracy narrative, which always believes that the shortest path between two points involves 10 somersaults. It was also an attempt to pressure Congress to approve his Save America Act, a bill that would restrict mail-in voting and require additional registration procedures that states, for the most part, reject as unnecessary or malicious in order to deprive hundreds of thousands of people of their rights.
Jumping from one topic to another, the president invited citizens to investigate the declassified papers on the White House website, which crashed shortly after the announcement. Papers full of strikeouts, difficult to understand or contextualize. Many of them already known in their entirety or in part. With some opinions from analysts who at some point pointed out signs that China was making strange or illegal moves or that it could be seeking to harm Trump. But in no known case do they support the strong claims made by the Executive today, rather reflecting deep debates within the Government and intelligence experts on how to label and define China's actions.
Despite this, the main thesis of the Executive is that there was massive interference by China and a cover-up operation by the "deep state"... because the conclusion was not that there was widespread fraud. Trump has never forgiven that four years earlier the same agencies warned of Russian efforts to interfere in the elections (although they did not achieve anything real) and of the ties of several of his collaborators with Moscow.
In the speech, which lasted half an hour, the president claimed that Beijing "carried out what is considered the largest data breach in electoral history, resulting in the illicit acquisition of 220 million American voter files. This information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, party preferences, and other sensitive data necessary to register to vote and participate in other illicit activities, which is exactly what was happening." He emphasized this by mentioning cases that were already known, but today partially censored documents from the investigation are added to them. These data files, some available on the internet or for sale on the dark web, are disturbing, but do not imply 'per se' that there was interference or a massive operation. "China has never interfered nor will interfere in the presidential elections of the United States." The election results "are determined by the votes of the American people," reacted immediately last night Liu Chang, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, in a statement.
"To further aggravate this scandal," the president continued, "the second set of documents we are making public today reveals that members of the so-called Deep State — a group of well-known individuals, in many cases within our intelligence agencies — actively worked to hide and minimize information about the extent of China's sinister electoral interference, covering it up from both the president and the American people in a way that no one would have believed possible (...) However, those responsible for sounding the alarm kept that information secret. They did not inform me as president, nor, as far as we know, did they inform Congress," he said, ignoring that there were many reports, including a comprehensive one delivered to him in January 2021 by the then national security advisor and current CIA director.
In any case, Trump insisted that China not only stole data but also bribed journalists critical of him and businessmen to make him appear less "hot," less successful during his term. He mentioned the case of Venezuela, but without drawing the link that his lawyers unsuccessfully sought six years ago. Trump said that the CIA has evidence that the Maduro government had managed to manipulate voting machines, but did not conclude that this knowledge and technology were used in the US, as Sidney Powell or Rudy Giuliani said at the time.
MS Now, the same outlet that two days ago reported that the national address would focus on these fraud allegations, reported yesterday that the White House gathered two dozen well-known activists aligned with Trump in recent years on this issue. The meeting was organized by conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, one of the main drivers of efforts to challenge the outcome of those elections. Attendees had to sign confidentiality agreements. According to some of them, the meeting did not provide them with major revelations, but rather reviewed information that conservative journalist John Solomon, a key figure in the White House's task force, and other MAGA figures had already published.
Solomon, a well-known conspiracy enthusiast, recently joined the White House as a special employee and, along with the acting Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, a person with no training or experience in the field, coordinated the process of declassifying thousands of documents related to alleged electoral irregularities, voting machines, and foreign interference.
Also present at the meeting was Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of 'True the Vote,' one of the most influential organizations in promoting theories of electoral fraud after the 2020 elections, the proponent of the theory of massive ballot stuffing through mail-in drop boxes. When Georgia authorities requested evidence supporting those accusations, the organization officially responded that they did not have documents to back them up.