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

U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech to the American people on Thursday evening was brief compared to many addresses he has given as president.

At 27 minutes, it was considerably shorter than his last State of the Union speech to Congress — the longest in American history at an hour and 47 minutes.

He used the time to repeat long-debunked claims that the 2020 election was “rigged,” and said the U.S. election system is currently unable to prevent cheating and interference.

Notably, Trump accused China of compromising the 2020 presidential election by stealing or hacking data and trying to make sure Trump didn’t win. To support his claims, he announced the release of newly declassified documents from the CIA and others.

But many of his claims contradict reports and assessments by U.S. intelligence officials that have been known publicly for years. Let’s look at the facts.

Did China manipulate the 2020 election?

The president said he was declassifying sensitive information that showed China had illicitly acquired 220 million U.S. voter files, including names, addresses and other data used to register to vote. Trump called it a “security nightmare.”

But at least some of this information is easily obtained. Many states openly and non-controversially sell versions of their voter data to candidates, political consultants and others who run campaigns.

Trump’s allegations also contradict an unclassified 2021 U.S. intelligence community assessment that found no indications any foreign actor attempted to alter or succeeded in altering “any technical aspect” of the 2020 vote, including voter registrations, ballots, tabulations or results.

Do the documents back up Trump?

Trump said members of the “deep state” — none of whom he identified — had acted to suppress information about China’s “sinister” election meddling. Trump said China wanted him to lose the 2020 election and had taken steps to make sure that happened. He cited two CIA documents, which were among those put on the White House website on Thursday.

However, the documents do not state that China directly interfered in the election or did anything to change its outcome. In some cases, they say the opposite.

The first one, from August 2020, is an assessment of foreign threats to the upcoming election. It says Russia, China, Iran and others have the capability to interfere in the voting process, steal sensitive data or call the result into question.

But it doesn’t claim that any states were actually doing that, and says they would likely be detected if they were.

That same document said China wanted Trump to lose and had tried to sway public opinion online, as Trump claims.

But it also says Russia was doing the opposite, using a “range of measures” to boost Trump’s candidacy. Those measures included allegations that Joe Biden was engaged in criminal activity related to Ukraine. Trump didn’t mention these Russian efforts in his speech last night.

The second document goes into more detail about China’s efforts to sway public opinion, but its main conclusion is that China “has not deployed influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.”

It added that Chinese leaders wanted stability in their relationship with the U.S., and that they could work with whoever won.

Are there threats to election infrastructure?

Trump also raised the alarm that foreign states could attack voter registration databases and election websites, as well as electronic voting machines and ballot counters. He described these systems as “vulnerable and easily compromised.”

But the intelligence document Trump cites characterizes these threats as a possibility, not that they were happening. In the case of voting machines, the document expresses doubt that a foreign state would be able to interfere.

“It probably would be difficult to coordinate a campaign to alter voting results on a wide scale,” the report said.

Are mail-in ballots ‘inherently corrupt’?

In his speech, Trump also attacked mail-in voting, which he has done repeatedly for years.

He said ballots sent through the mail are “inherently corrupt” and pledged to put an end to the practice except in cases of illness, disability, military deployments or travel. He described mail-in ballots as a “vulnerability” that must be stopped.

However, in March of this year, Trump used a mail-in ballot himself to vote in a Florida special election.

In April, Trump issued an executive order that attempted to crack down on mail-in voting by demanding the postal service refuse to deliver ballots to anyone not on newly created federal mail voter lists.

Trump, however, has never put forward any evidence that mail-in voting constitutes cheating or compromises elections.