United States President Donald Trump has delivered an extraordinary prime time television speech, alleging government “cover-ups” and “vulnerability” in the nation’s electoral system.
He made broad accusations about a “deep state” conspiracy involving his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and he lashed out at familiar foes, including the news media and China.
For years, Trump has spread baseless claims that his loss in the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen”.
Trump stopped short of repeating his false claim that he had, in fact, won that race. But in his remarks, he sought to raise suspicion about the election’s outcome, pointing to declassified government documents.
Those files, however, painted a more nuanced picture than Trump portrayed, and they failed to substantiate his claims of a conspiracy.
After the speech, Democrats criticised Trump for attempting to mislead the public and reduce confidence in the US electoral system, with months to go until the November midterm election.
One of the biggest accusations of the night was levied against China, the US’s geopolitical rival.
“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,” Trump said near the outset of his speech.
He claimed that Beijing, through “illicit” means, had acquired 220 million US voter files, including names, addresses and party preferences.
“Think of that: Tens of millions of voters’ data in 18 states have been bought, stolen or hacked by China,” Trump said.
A spokesperson for China’s embassy denied such claims, saying the country “has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the US”.
Trump, however, did not say that the information had been used to influence any election.
But critics pointed out that such voter information is already publicly available. Some states even sell that public data, for prices ranging from $0 to $37,000, as the US Election Assistance Commission explained in a 2020 report.
The documents declassified by the White House also appeared to indicate Beijing was, at least in part, drawing from publicly available data. It did, however, express curiosity at China’s increasing interest in such information.
“While the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government has historically demonstrated interest in US elections, this is a newly-identified interest for this individual actor,” a heavily redacted assessment said.
“The US voter registration information is available for public download, with 2021 voter registration information available for some states.”
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