Trump doesn’t raise doubts about his election wins

Trump began Thursday night with a stark warning about what he described as flaws in the voting system and said he was releasing previously classified documents related to the 2020 and 2018 elections, when he lost the presidential election and his party suffered losses.

Trump’s speech presented allegations of interference and influence in ways that lacked key context, and did not produce evidence that votes had been manipulated or that the election outcome had been altered.

Election security experts say America’s decentralized voting system, with the power over elections residing with the states instead of the federal government, is a strength. Americans vote in more than 10,000 different jurisdictions with different rules, making the nations’ elections extraordinarily complicated but safe from widespread fraud.

No credible intelligence has emerged showing that the vote count in 2020 was manipulated by foreign actors. Repeated audits and reviews -- manyrun by Republicans, including Trump’s own then-attorney general -- have found no significant fraud occurred in 2020.

Even if substantiated, Trump’s claims did not amount to conduct that would have altered the outcome of any race, let alone the 2020 race for the White House.

He also did not raise doubts about his election wins in 2016 or 2024.

As Trump spoke, the White House unveiled a website containing documents that were presented without context and included selectively released pieces of investigation files, intelligence analysis and correspondence.

Former intelligence official calls address ‘dangerous’

Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term, called the president’s address “a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic.” She said the intelligence community throughout Trump’s first term was alarmed about foreign interference in elections, but Trump scoffed at them, angered at the investigation of his campaign’s relationship with Russia.

“He had an entire term to deal with it and I don’t know how you can believe how the same community that told him about it, that was excoriated about it” wouldn’t warn him in 2020, Gordon said on CNN.

Conservative commentator John Solomon, who joined the White House staff last month and was seated in the East Room for Trump’s speech, later told MS NOW that “the intelligence community has zero evidence that someone has flipped – that a foreign power flipped -- a vote in 2020, ‘22 or ’24.”

But, he added, “We’re not through all the documents.”

Trump urged the Justice Department to conduct investigations and prosecutions, though it was unclear from his speech what sort of criminal conduct — if any — could be identified, proven and charged.

In a contrast with his concerns about foreign interference in elections, Trump in his new budget proposes a $707 million cut in the U.S. Cybsersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, the group charged with protecting American election systems from overseas cyberattacks. Trump and other conservatives have been frustrated that the organization pushed back on election claims in 2020 and beyond.

Some networks did not air it live

In past presidencies, primetime addresses have typically been reserved for major milestones or nationally significant events.

Trump last spoke to the nation in April, giving an address on the Iran war a month after it started. He said then that the U.S. would accomplish its objectives “very shortly” and that “the hard part is done, so it should be easy.” The war, however, has dragged on and strikes between the U.S. and Iran have intensified this week.

Trump also delivered a politically charged primetime speech in December in which he sought to blame the challenging economic climate on Democrats.

ABC, NBC and CNN did not air Thursday’s remarks live but carried them in full on their streaming services.

CBS and MS NOW both cut away from Trump’s speech before he finished, while Fox News continued to carry his address.

Trump called out the media outlets for not carrying it live and accused them of being “part of a plot.”

Networks typically — but not always — carry presidential addresses to the nation live. In 2022, when Biden delivered a primetime address full of warnings about Trump and his adherents’ “extreme ideology,” the networks did not carry it live.

In 2014, the major networks chose to stick with their primetime programming instead of airing an address by President Barack Obama on his plans for immigration reform.

Democrats accuse Trump of seeking to discredit next election

Democrats warned that Trump was trying to revive false claims of past stolen elections in order to delegitimize the 2026 midterm elections, in which Trump’s Republican Party is facing headwinds.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia called Trump’s claims “totally bogus.”

“The fact is our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election,” Warner said in a statement on X. “A single concurring opinion suggested China may have tried to sway voters’ opinions … but that’s been public knowledge since 2021.”

Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, the ranking Democrat on the administration committee that handles federal voting issues and elections, said Trump is trying to sow confusion before the midterm elections.

“This is a pretext for the president, I think, calling into dispute the 2026 elections,” Morelle said on C-SPAN, adding that “we have secure elections.”

“I heard no concrete allegations that foreign actors actually changed the results of an American election,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said on CNN.

>>1524155
All that talking up for this address and it's just the usual crying and whining and "t-they cheated!!" Six years of this. What a fucking loser.

>>1524163
Some of the documents released confirmed Russiagate and showed that the Chinese were targeting the Biden campaign in 2020 lol

>>1524166
It sure is crazy how he constantly claims fraud in 2020, but not in 2016 and 2024.
Refresh my memory. Who was president in 2020, and who was president in 2016 and 2024?

>>1524155
>Voter ID would 'steal" the election
We know, piggy.

>>1524172
since you're begging for change, here's a rupee

>>1524173
Keep your Yuan, faggot.

>>1524169
Remember, this is the cry baby who claimed Ted Cruz stole the Iowa Caucus.
It's criminal negligence that the democrats didn't immediately label him as a sore loser and whiny bitch.
Or worse, dragging their feet in prosecuting him for his failed coup to the point he was able to run out the clock.

>>1524172
>Disfranchising millions of democrat-leaning voters would steal the election
Correct, rat. Glad we agree.

>>1524155
The experiment is over.

>>1524189
THAT RAT BASTARD BROWNIE DOESN'T SPEAK FOR ME! WHO THE FUCK CARES THAT BALLOTS HAVE CHECKS AND THE FRAUD WE SCREAM ABOUT ALL DAY ISN'T HAPPENING AT ANY MEANINGFUL RATE? RAPE-DADDY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO CHEAT YOU SHMIGGY SHWIGGY SHLIGGY!

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/us/trump-speech-elections-takeaways.html

President Trump said his address on Thursday night was about building public confidence in American elections, but he spent much of his speech undermining them.

A broken election system is one of Mr. Trump’s most common refrains, dating to early 2016.

“Great damage has been done to our country,” the president said. “Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen, and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue.”

But documents Mr. Trump released to support his claims — and previous assessments from the intelligence community — do not back up his most aggressive statements about election security. In fact, some of the documents reach the opposite conclusion.

They also do not contain significant new revelations about vulnerabilities in election systems. One of the documents posted on the White House website was blunt: “We assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipulate on a wide enough scale to compromise election results.”

Below are takeaways from Mr. Trump’s prime-time speech.

Trump called for bolstering protections he has dismantled.

Mr. Trump called for fixing vulnerabilities in electronic voting system so that “we can never watch a stolen election again.”

“If you look at voting today, it’s in such bad shape in so many states,” Mr. Trump said. “And we are committing to fix it, and we are also committing to be working with those states and local jurisdictions to help them fix and patch known technical vulnerabilities before the midterm elections.”

But Mr. Trump has spent the first part of his second term dismantling the election protections built up over previous years. The F.B.I.’s task force on foreign influence was shut down, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sharply cut back a task force that warned against foreign meddling and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has been gutted.

And Mr. Trump has appointed an heir to a housing fortune with no relevant experience as the interim director of national intelligence.

Grains of truth were blown out of proportion.

Mr. Trump described a series of allegations about voter interference in the 2020 vote. He said that China had bought, stolen or hacked tens of millions of voter data files across 18 states. And he attacked a “deep state” conspiracy that he said was aimed at suppressing the information.
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“Yet those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden,” Mr. Trump said. “They did not disclose to me as president or to anyone else and to the best of our knowledge they did not inform Congress.”

It is true that the documents show an intense debate among intelligence officials about alerting their superiors.

But U.S. intelligence and congressional officials have long known that China obtained voter data — publicly available information often purchased by political campaigns. What’s more, former intelligence officials have said, China gathered the data not to manipulate voting results, but instead to better craft influence campaigns to shape voters’ perceptions.

While the documents outline some nascent interest by Chinese officials in influence operations, they concede Beijing never endorsed any broad-based effort to undercut Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump also referred to a report about Venezuela showing it could successfully tamper with voting machines.

John Solomon, who is leading Mr. Trump’s task force on declassifying documents on a range of issues, told reporters outside the White House that the intelligence community documents show no evidence that votes in election machines were changed in the past three elections.

What about Russia?

Railing against the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies’ investigations into to Russian meddling in 2016 is one of Mr. Trump’s favorite themes. And in 2020, a majority of intelligence officials assessed that the Russian campaign to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr. was the most robust. (At the time, John Ratcliffe, then the director of national intelligence, disagreed with that view and argued that career intelligence officials had downplayed China’s efforts.)

But Mr. Trump barely mentioned Russia in his speech on Thursday, using most of it to lament Chinese efforts to denigrate him.

Mr. Trump’s approach to Russia has long been to treat its president, Vladimir V. Putin, as a peer, and his Justice Department is currently pressing ahead with an investigation into a possible “grand conspiracy” by Democrats to tie the president to Russia.

Mr. Trump appeared to allude to such a conspiracy with a non sequitur about burn bags, which are used to get rid of government documents that no longer need to be saved, and former President Barack Obama.

He repeated a demand for voting restrictions before the midterms.

For weeks, Mr. Trump has been pressuring Congress to pass a broad election bill to curb mail-in voting, provide documentary proof of citizenship and show photo identification to vote.

Mr. Trump ended his speech with a call to Congress to pass it, despite Republican resistance.

“Addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the SAVE America act,” Mr. Trump said. “The only reason you would not do it is you want to cheat. Because your policies are so bad. And your candidates are so pathetic.”

But the problems Mr. Trump focused on his speech — allegations that foreign governments are mounting influence campaigns or could potentially hack local election authorities — have almost nothing to do with the measures that are part of the bill.

And the lack of focus on anything else forward-looking underscores how little Mr. Trump’s interest in elections is about the ones still to come, compared to the ones he has already faced.

>>1524169
Desperation is a stinky cologne
And Trump is already smelly because he shits his pants all the time

It's not allowed to be linked, but in the stuff trump declassified, it proved he conspired with the Russians, again since they were spearheaded a campaign against Biden, specifically about Berisma

Trump won in 2020 it is a fact rat liggy dumbocrats are killing white babies and destroying the economy.

Fuck scum liggy fag living ligger frauds commies

>>1524229
Can anyone translate this chudspeak?

>>1524230
>>I'm esl, shill and I lurve white babies getting raped by billionaires

>>1524155
>Trump also did not bring up the 2016 election where he conspired with the Russians and their interference to help install him as president.

Thats exactly what the declassified docs are about. Obama and clinton laindered that information out of thin air despite the cia, fbi, and nsa all saying there is no evidence of such a thing. You didnt read shit and wrote a book. Gtfo

>>1524236
>Russians and their interference to help install him as president.
But this happened. It was confirmed to happen.
And Trump refused to provide information to confirm if he did collude, which MIGA pretended meant he was innocent

>>1524169
2016 (Obama President): Legit
2020 (Trump President): FRAUD
2024 (Biden President): Legit

>>1524258
Just don't conspire with the Russians to steal the election like trump did and there's no fraud.
One easy trick

>>1524259
MIGA is complaining that elections were fair when a democrat was in charge and were fraudulent when a republicunt was in charge
They're not smart people.

>>1524260
Don't forget if trump were actually serious, he wouldn't have fired everyone designed to help with election security.

>>1524264
>if trump were actually serious, he wouldn't have fired everyone designed to help with election security.
...are you sure? He's not just a criminal, he's also a moron

>>1524155
My favorite part of the bullshit fanfiction is that there’s supposedly this super-secret deep state cabal that can rig elections so Trump doesn’t win. Okay, but…Trump won twice. Were they on vacation in ‘16 and ‘24?

>>1524272
There are a lot of suspicious circumstances around the 2024 election, including but not nearly limited to trump winning all 5 swing states with a margin just under what was necessary to trigger a recount, a statistical anomaly.

You shouldn't be making fun of him for 2020, you should remember how ever conservative accusation is a confession, and be demanding a forensic audit of 2024.

>>1524273
I know. I want that too.

>>1524273
Yep. let's get this voter ID shit going.

>>1524321
Heritage Foundation found less than 100 ID cases of fraud out of over a billion votes since year 2000.

>>1524339
horseshit, esl shill has sworn that all you have to do is walk into any cities voting center, claim you're Bill American, and they'll let you vote

>>1524339
>Heritage Foundation
Isn't that the all jewish "right wing" group that wants unlimited Indians through H1B visas?

>>1524349
Yep. Bush Republicans, AKA, Democrats.

He could do this the lowkey way that Dubya did in 2000 and just work with swing-state election officials to shitcan boxes and boxes of unfriendly ballots. As with 2000, the USSC will work with him.

Or he could do something blatantly arrogant and stupid like announcing he is gonna steal the election, just because he can.

>>1524350
>Admitting trump republicans are outright fascists for this to make any sense.

>>1524351
trump's goons tried this in 2020 when they attempted the brook brothers riot 2.0 in Philly where they were going to storm the election office and start attacking officials there like they did in 2000.
The good news was pro democracy protestors showed up and blocked them off which forced the police to step in and kick everyone out so the count was able to continue.

>>1524260
When maga candidate wins election: Fair and honest
When maga candidate loses election: FRAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUD!!!1!
Also I like the claims about fraud in the CA primaries, somehow the dems rigged the mayor's race by hiring tens of thousands of homeless people to vote for them, but just ignored the governor's race on the same ballot and let the maga candidate slip by.

>>1524369
Both sides complain non-stop when elections don't have their side winning. It isn't insane that elections would be rigged, but it is safe to say the democratic party is so detached from their voting base that 4 years of Biden turned tons of people towards Trump