Trump attacks U.S. election integrity, as Republicans face risk of midterm defeat

Trump attacks U.S. election integrity, as Republicans face risk of midterm defeat

U.S. president uses prime-time address to try to make Americans believe the voting system is rigged

Trump accuses China of U.S. election meddling in national address

Near the start of his address to the nation Thursday night, U.S. President Donald Trump solemnly insisted that his aim was not to undermine confidence in the country's elections.

He then did pretty much everything he could during his 27 minutes of airtime to make Americans believe the voting system in the world's oldest modern democracy is rigged.

"There's no third world country that has elections like we have," Trump said at one point.

Trump made sensational claims, depicting an election system riddled with vulnerabilities from hacking, foreign interference, non-citizens voting and mail-in ballot fraud, all covered up by what he called the "deep state" of intelligence officials.

"Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in elections, but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly," he said early in the speech.

While some observers expected Trump's main goal would be to prove his oft-repeated lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, the message seemed more directed at making Americans fear for the integrity of the vote right now — just in time for the crucial 2026 midterms.

Polling suggests the Republicans are poised to lose their slim majority in the House, which could put the Democrats in position to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump, and are potentially at risk of losing control of the Senate.

Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer predicted before Trump's address that it would be "about undermining the 2026 election before a single vote has been cast."

That prediction seemed to be borne out the longer Trump's address went on.

U.S. election system 'falls catastrophically short'

"Every American deserves to know that when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately, in a system ... where cheating and interference are not just difficult, but virtually impossible," Trump said.

"Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard," he added.

Trump made five key claims in his address.

"Put together, these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it," said Trump.

But dig a little into each claim, and there's nothing to suggest that any of them actually affected the results of any U.S. election.

Foreign attempts to influence U.S. elections are nothing new, said Sue Gordon, who served as principal deputy director of national intelligence during Trump's first term.

'It does the work of our adversaries'

Gordon says Trump did not reveal any evidence that China's meddling had an impact on the outcome of the 2020 vote.

"I think this was a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic," Gordon told CNN on Thursday night.

"It does the work of our adversaries," she said. "See, they don't have to interfere. They just have to convince us to not trust our democracy."

Issue One, a bipartisan non-profit organization that advocates for democracy, said Trump's address was "riddled with tired, debunked lies and distortions" in an attempt to exert presidential power over elections.

"Americans shouldn’t lose sight of what's happening," said Issue One's co-founder and CEO Nick Penniman. "This isn't about the 2020 elections – this is about 2026 and 2028."

Political consultants break down Trump's speech

Trump's proposed solution to the alleged fragility of the U.S. electoral system is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE Act, a bill that's been floundering on Capitol Hill for months, with too few senators willing to back it.

He pleaded with Americans to call their members of Congress to urge them to pass the bill.

Yet it's anything but clear how the SAVE Act would deal with the foreign interference and voting machine vulnerabilities that Trump claimed to be plaguing the election system.

It would force all voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship — such as a birth certificate or passport — in person to register to vote.

White House posts declassified documents

During Trump's address, the White House posted on its website the declassified documents that the president said provided the evidence for his allegations.

The documents do not consistently appear to back up Trump's claims.

Fact-checking Donald Trump's national address on U.S. election integrity

"We assess that Beijing has taken some low-level, exploratory steps to denigrate the President and shape voter perceptions ahead of the election," says one email, dated Oct. 5, 2020, from what appears to be an intelligence official whose name is redacted.

Trump turned that into a claim that China wanted to make Americans think "your president wasn't so hot, when actually your president has done a great job, and they did everything possible to do exactly that."

Still, there's no doubt this is not the last you'll hear from Trump about election integrity in the three-plus months until the midterms.

For the better part of a year, the Democrats and pro-democracy activists have been expressing growing concern over what they see as a pattern of the Trump administration attempting to wrest control of election management away from the states and to make Americans doubt the security of the ballot.

Trump accuses China of election interference in national address about voting results

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware says Trump made "lots of dark and sinister allegations" of vulnerabilities in the U.S. election system during his address, as part of an ongoing effort to avoid Republican losses in the upcoming midterms.

"I heard no concrete evidence or even allegations that foreign actors actually changed the results of American elections," Coons told CNN after the address.

"There is only one person involved in this who we know for sure tried to meddle in the 2020 elections, and that is Donald J. Trump."

Mike Crawley is a correspondent for CBC News, based in Washington. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in B.C., spent six years as a freelance journalist in various parts of Africa, then joined the CBC in 2005. Mike reported on Ontario politics for 15 years. He was born and raised in Saint John, N.B.