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Sarah

Donald Trump has delivered a primetime speech from the White House addressing the nation, telling them he thinks American elections are not safe. Newly declassified intelligence he said would show meddling elections passed and the danger of elections in the future.

Donald Trump (speech excerpts)

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

Sarah

Why is Donald Trump warning America now that he thinks there's a danger of cheating and meddling in American elections? What's in it for him? And could it have something to do with the upcoming midterm elections? That's what we're gonna dive into. Welcome to americast.

Anthony

Americast. Americast from BBC News.

Donald Trump (speech excerpts)

You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.

Anthony

We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.

Sarah

This is a big cover up and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome.

Anthony

I have four words for you. Turn the volume.

Sarah

Hello, it's Sarah. I'm at home in Georgetown in Washington because it's just after 10 o' clock in the evening on Thursday night here and it's Anthony.

Anthony

I am also at home here in Arlington, Virginia. Sarah. We were just together earlier tonight over cocktails, but now we're back to work and talking about Donald Trump's speech.

Sarah

Yeah, because we both had to come home and watch Donald Trump giving an address to the nation that was, well, it was carried live on some television channels, not all of them, but he had billed this as a really important primetime speech where he was going to tell the nation about the ways in which American elections were being interfered with. There was some cynicism, I might say, Anthony, around Washington about whether or not he was going to produce any evidence or what kind of bombshell he would deliver. And he fell a wee bit short, I think, don't You.

Anthony

Yeah, big, big news is the way he had touted it and he did question the, the security of American elections. He made some allegations against China, accusing them of meddling in the 2018 midterms of the 2020 presidential election, saying they acquired voter data information. But he didn't present any evidence that ballots were tampered or that the results of the 2020 election or any elections had been influenced, had been affected directly by China or any other country. So some of this was familiar, some of it was new. And we'll have to unpick a lot of the, the details of what he is providing. He says he's released these classified documents, but the top line is a lot of allegations, but not a lot of substance behind them.

Sarah

Yeah, let's have a listen to some of the allegations that he was coming up with so that people can judge for themselves what he had to say.

Donald Trump (speech excerpts)

Over a period of years, 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, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files. CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, in mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party's policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the US President in an effort to reduce the US President's votes and make him resign or prevent his reelection. The third set of documents we are releasing proves that for many years Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems. Dishonest, almost all. They're vulnerable and they're easily compromised. And people within our government knew that. According to the DHS review, state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections. Since Democrat states refuse to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher than that. But most importantly, addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the Save America Act. How easy is that to do? Unless you want to cheat. The only reason you wouldn't do it is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad and your candidates are so pathetic that you can't get away or can't get elected any other way.

Anthony

All right, Sarah. I think the first thing we need to say is that this is rare. A President addressing the nation in prime time, 9 o', clock, east coast time, 6 o', clock, out in California. This is a, a tool that presidents have that they don't use that Often because of the power of it speaking directly to Americans after they've come home from work. It's used to talk about issues of war and economic crises. Joe Biden came on after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Donald Trump has used it to talk about the start of the Iran military operations. This is not one of those. This was a different sort of speech.

Sarah

Yeah, but he wanted people to think that it was of a similar importance, didn't he? Wanted people to think that this was a national security threat and that he was outlining the ways in which other countries had already tried to meddle in American elections and the threat that they might try to do so again. He wanted people to think that this was as important as taking the nation to war or something like that, because it's in his interest. And we'll explain some of this as we go through why he thinks it's so important basically to try and persuade the American people that the 2020 election was not valid and potentially elections going forward might also not be entirely valid.

Anthony

Yeah, you know, it's a feeling at the end of this, after I listened to it, that this was almost a pitch again for a specific solution that he's advancing. And that's what's called the SAVE Act. It's a voter election integrity legislation that Republicans have been pushing that has been stalled in the US Senate now for months. It pretty much does away with mail ballot. It requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, it requires voter identification to cast ballots. That has been stuck in the Senate, doesn't have much hopes of passing the Senate. Democrats are blocking it. They'd have to change Senate procedures in order for it to get through. So this almost felt like a last ditch effort to try to change the trajectory of that, to drum up momentum to increase the pressure on the U.S. congress. And he actually went out and said, call your members of Congress and urged them to pass this act. It didn't feel like anything bigger than that, which I think coming into this, the feeling was, well, maybe this would be some sort of big news, that he would have some sort of bigger ask than just pass this thing that I've been telling in pass now for months.

Sarah

Yeah, but what he has done is declassify information and some investigations by the CIA, made them available on the White House website so that people can look at them. And there will be many people diving deep into these documents which he say not only reveal foreign interference in American elections, but also a deep state conspiracy to cover that up. And we should go through that, Anthony, shouldn't we step by step to see what it is that he's alleging and whether or not there really is any evidence for that. Because although, as you say, he's using it as a pitch to try and pass the SAVE act, which would influence elections going forward, he hasn't given up on the idea that the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was somehow rigged and somehow stolen from him. And he started by focusing on China, didn't he, Anthony? And saying that they had been able to access millions of files of voter data, that he was able to get the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, all of that kind of thing of American voters, basically all the information that you would need to register to vote. And he said that he was presenting evidence of that. That is not in and of itself evidence that anybody did falsely register to vote or that anybody manipulated the election in any right.

Anthony

And it's not great. I think the idea of foreign governments having all this information about Americans in their hands is concerning. I mean, some voter information files are publicly available, some are actually available to purchase. And one of the things Donald Trump said was trying to purchase some of them. Now, they're not supposed to be sold to foreign governments, but maybe they found some way of getting their hands on them. He did provide a number of 220 million files of voters that that China has acquired, but he did not present any evidence, as you say, about what they did with that information. They could have used it to gather data on Americans, to get an idea of what the American electorate looks like with the demographics, the same sort of thing that people who analyze elections use this information for. But you're right, that was a big thing. The first big thing was to say China got their hands on all of this information and then to imply that they did so for nefarious purposes.

Sarah

And I was listening to that firstly thinking, okay, you're telling us they've got this information, but you're not giving us any evidence that they used it in any way. But I was also at the same time thinking to myself, if China did have the ability to influence the outcome of the 2020 election, would they necessarily want Donald Trump out of office? Would they necessarily want to replace him with Joe Biden? I mean, all of the investigation into the 2016 election was around the fact that Russia and other of America's enemies would rather a chaotic president in the White House, somebody like Donald Trump, who they think is destabilizing the Western world, rather than a kind of, you know, old foreign policy hand like Joe Biden.

Anthony

Right. And he alleged that China. Trump alleged that China was also pressuring business leaders to try to convince people that Trump was not a great president, was also trying to use social media to influence the election. Again, things that Russia definitely tried to do in 2016, that the Mueller report, a joint bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee review, found Russian efforts not just to use social media to influence elections, but also trying to gain access to voter data, to actually gain access to voting systems, although they did not. To hack members of the Democratic Party, including senior people in Hillary Clinton's campaign, which they then leaked, caused damage to Hillary Clinton, and actually even funding on the ground, electioneering rallies Russian government funded in various parts of the country in order to sow chaos and disorder. So, yes, what China did and what he has alleged, there is evidence of that, and it's been evidence that we've seen in the past. But China's not the only country. But Trump seemed to be very focused on China here because in his view, China was trying to undermine him in particular, and to by, as a result, to boost Joe Biden.

Sarah

And of course, the idea that China or anybody else who sees itself as an adversary to America would be trying to influence business leaders, use social media, any of the things he was talking about. I mean, that's kind of all fair, isn't it? In international relations, you know, you want to destabilize your enemies. That's not evidence that something went wrong with the election. That's just evidence of the fact that your enemies will work against you. And that's inevitable.

Anthony

Yeah. I mean, the United States has done its share of attempts to influence foreign governments and exerts pressure abroad. And certainly, you know, we'd say it's only for the best of reasons, but we are well aware that there are other countries that would love to see, you know, Americans lose trust in their institutions, lose trust in democracy, and we should be aware of that. Now, Trump said that there is evidence that the infrastructure of American elections is susceptible to attack, that cyber fraud can be used to not only gain these voter data information, but also to disrupt voter files, the logbooks that polling places use to see who is registered voters. These are also concerns that Americans and the American government has known about for quite some time after 2016. And that evidence of Russian attempts to disrupt the elections. There were funding, there were steps taken to try to address some of these shortcomings, and they definitely have not been solved. In fact, some of the things Donald Trump has done recently is cut funding for some of the same election security organizations and apparatus that were instituted after 2016. But it is something that Americans should be worried about, should be worried about the infrastructure of their elections and ensuring that it is safe from foreign attack.

Sarah

And he also targeted voting machines. And this is really interesting because it's something that Donald Trump and his allies have talked a lot about in the 2020 election, where they alleged that voting machines were manipulated. And there are people who genuinely believe that if they pressed a button or pulled a lever for Trump, it somehow within the machine got turned into a vote for Biden, and that's what was counted. But before we go into whether or not they were ever accessed, Anthony, could you explain to us how these voting machines work? Because you may or may not know. It's not something I'm accustomed to in any way. If you vote in the United Kingdom, you walk into the polling station and you use a pen to tick a box or put a cross in a box for the person that you're voting for. The whole idea of using a machine to do it is a little bit alien to a lot of us. Yeah.

Anthony

And the one thing you need to know is that it's different from state to state. They have different systems, different machines. It's one of the reasons why we've found that the American system of conducting elections is difficult to hack is because you can't just hack one system. You'd have to hack all of these different systems, all of these different states. But, for instance, here in Virginia, when I go to vote, it is a paper ballot that I fill out with little circles on a piece of paper. But then I take it to a scanatron and I put it in the scan tron and it runs through, and it will tell me whether it was accepted or not. And then I go over and I confirm with the people that I voted. Other places, there are touch screens that you can touch on and that will give you a printout that you can run over and turn in. A lot of it has changed since 2000, when those elections that were disputed between Al Gore and George W. Bush, where. Oh, the infamous hanging chads.

Sarah

Yes.

Anthony

Butterfly ballast. You'd have to punch through on the chads. And it was clear at that point that a lot of the systems were just antiquated and unreliable to. You could tell whether whether a vote had been cast or not, whether it had been pushed all the way through. A lot of that has changed, but the systems generally now will provide some sort of paper record, which is why you've seen these audits that were conducted in Places like Arizona and Georgia. After Donald Trump's allegations of voting fraud in 2020, why they were able to sit down and hand recount these paper ballots. They may have been tabulated by machines, but there was a record that they could, they could count. But if you talk to someone in New York or talk to someone who votes by mail in California, or talk to someone who votes in a polling place in Florida, everyone's experience is going to be a little bit different.

Sarah

And Donald Trump was saying tonight basically that these voting machines could be accessed by Russia, China, North Korea, even Iran. I think he was suggesting this has been discussed a lot ever since the 2020 election. And in fact, there have been court cases. The Dominion Voting systems took a case against Fox News, didn't they? Where, because Fox News had accused them of their voting machines of having been inaccurate. And actually Fox News ended up paying millions of dollars to Dominion Voting. Now, there's other companies involved in this as well. From what I could hear of what Donald Trump was saying, I'd be really interested, Anthony, if you heard the same thing that he was essentially saying. It's possible these countries could access the voting machines. But yet again, he didn't have any evidence that it had actually happened. Right.

Anthony

He alleged that this election system is broken and vulnerable. No one can defend it, but he didn't really say why. He said that there was corruption in these elections because it was taking too long to count the ballots. And in California, it was actually interesting. He was talking about voting fraud and evidence, concrete evidence of voting fraud. But the place he was talking about that voting fraud was in Venezuela. He said that the United States government had compelling, concrete evidence that there were attempts to change millions of votes in Venezuela. And he said if it could happen, essentially implied that if it could happen in Venezuela, then it's certainly possible that it could happen here. But it's a different sort of system in Venezuela, and the security that they have here in the United States is definitely very different than Venezuela. One of the things to keep in mind, Sarah, too, is that voting machines are not connected to the Internet in this country. They are not something that you could buy remotely hack into. Now, in theory, if you had access to the voting polling places or the place where the votes are counted, you could, you could do some sort of hacking. But that would require more than just some clever person with an Internet password connecting from China.

Sarah

Yeah. And in fact, even on that Venezuela election, where Donald Trump did seem to be suggesting that there was more evidence gathered by the CIA of interference with the Voting machines there. If you look at what the CIA had said was that they said they thought the government may have the capability to do that, but no evidence that it had actually happened. Again, so we're still in the same realm of maybe bad actors might have access to doing something. But even Trump himself is not presenting any evidence that it actually, in fact, happened. And then moving on to things that might affect the midterm elections, and one has to assume a lot of this is to do with the midterm elections. He did have some numbers, some new figures, about how many non citizens in America, he says, are registered to vote, which does seem a little bit bizarre. The idea that somebody who either doesn't have the legal right to be in America, or I guess somebody like me. I mean, I'm legally allowed to be in America and I'm legally allowed to work, but I'm not allowed to vote in your elections because I'm not a citizen. Now, to the best of my knowledge, I'm not on a voter roll. But it would be a fairly big deal, I guess, if there were huge numbers of non citizens on the voter roll.

Anthony

So, I mean, that would raise the specter that some of those people did vote. And now there have been investigations, and there have been very few instances of people who were registered to vote improperly actually did cast ballots. But he came up with a number. He said 278,000 non citizens are registered to vote in federal elections. One of the things about registering the vote is you can do it at a polling place. You can do it at county office, you can do it at the DMV when you're getting your driver's license. And if you check the wrong box, in theory, you, Sarah, could get registered to vote, but it wouldn't be a federal crime unless you went and cast a ballot knowing. And knowing that you're not a legal citizen and cast that ballot in an election. But there's a potential for that. One thing you have to remember is that there are 170 million registered voters in the United States. 278,000, if that is an accurate figure, is a fraction of 1%. And there have been studies of some of the data that the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, has been relying on to come up with these numbers for undocumented registered voters. And it has been found to overcount that number. In the past, there was a study of some Texas data where local precincts or local counties were presented with undocumented voters. And they went and looked, and actually they were voters who became citizens. And it just wasn't updated in the files that Homeland Security were using. It was someone with a similar name. So we'd have to look more into where these numbers are coming from, from the administration before we can definitively say that that is accurate.

Sarah

But even if there were just over a quarter of a million non citizens registered to vote, and even if they all did cast a ballot, that's barely enough to affect the outcome of a presidential vote in one state, isn't it? Let alone across the whole country.

Anthony

Right, exactly. And then, so that is, I don't think anyone asserts that there is no fraud, that fraudulent ballots haven't been cast, but to do so in the big enough sorts of numbers to do so without being caught all in one direction or the other, I think that is the bar that we haven't seen any evidence of being reached in any presidential election. I mean, there are, there are allegations, there have been evidence, there have been convictions of voting fraud in places like North Carolina and congressional elections, and there have been some instances of people who cast illegal ballots who have been caught in places like Texas and California and they've been prosecuted, but there's been a lot of eyeballs looking for more evidence of that. And the fact that we've only been able to find a handful here and a handful there, I think that suggests the system, at least as far as we can tell, is working mostly the way it's designed.

Sarah

I assume, though, Donald Trump is bringing this up, even though the numbers aren't huge, because it's part of a wider story that he's been telling both about elections and about immigration, where you hear him and his supporters repeating the idea that lots and lots of non citizens are in America casting ballots for Democrats. And a conspiracy theory that one of the reasons that the Biden administration allowed so many people to come into America and had such very weak border security during the four years that Biden was in office was deliberately to bring lots and lots of immigrants into America, allow them to register to vote, and have them all vote Democrat to make sure that no Republican could ever be elected again. Now, that sounds wild and crazy, but it's something I hear a lot from people who genuinely believe it, that this is the reason why Democrats, as they perceive it, have been more lax about immigration, and that it's a big conspiracy, basically to alter the electorate of America and create an inbuilt Democrat majority. So when Donald Trump's pushing stories like this, it's presumably to feed some of that and to get to this SAVE act that we were talking about earlier and try and persuade Congress to vote, to make people have to prove their citizenship before they can register to vote. Right.

Anthony

And that is the flip side of this, that Donald Trump will say, if you pass the SAVE act, then Republicans will win elections for the next 50 years. That the only reason why a Republican loses an election is because of voting fraud, because of all these ballots being cast illegally. And if, if all you do is require proof of citizenship, showing a, I suppose, a birth certificate or a passport when you're registering to vote, and then if your name does not currently match your birth certificate, then showing a, A, your marriage license or some sort of legal name change in order to get that voter registration, if you have those sorts of bars, then only legal people will be voting. And if only legal people are voting, then Republicans will win in the landslide. Obviously, that requires some pretty significant leaps of faith when you look at public opinion polling and the way elections have been conducted for generations, and the fact that Republicans win, sometimes they lose, sometimes the electorate is fickle, and voting fraud does not play any kind of a significant role in that.

Sarah

And I do wonder if Donald Trump is worried about the midterm elections, why he's still going on about the 2020 vote. Because, I mean, there are some of his supporters who believe that that election was stolen from him, but I think even them are beginning to think it's ancient history and it's not going to persuade people to back Republican candidates in November if he keeps harping on about this when they're more worried about the economy, that price of gas, and what looks like might be turning into a forever war in Iran. But he still seems to be obsessed by the 2020 election and by surrounding himself with people whom he basically forces to say that they, too, believe the 2020 election was stolen. I personally don't think that half of the folk around him actually believe that. They just know that in order to keep their jobs in Donald Trump's cabinet or in the White House, they have to say to him, oh, yes, sir, of course you were robbed in 2020, 2020.

Anthony

We got a good example of that, actually, earlier this week with Jay Clayton, who is currently the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a big job acquiring, overseeing all the financial companies in southern New York. But he has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the Director of National Intelligence. And he was questioned during his confirmation hearings just recently about whether he thinks or who he thought won the 2020 US presidential election, which Joe Biden won. But Listen to his response.

Jay Clayton

Do you deny that Joe Biden won the 2020 election? Senator, I'm not an election denier. Joe Biden was certified as the President of the United States. Election denial is something we cannot have.

Donald Trump (speech excerpts)

So I will take that as.

Jay Clayton

You do not deny that Joe Biden

Anthony

won the 2020 election.

Jay Clayton

Yeah, I'm not. I'm not. I think. Let me just be clear. We. We have substantial work to do, and I've made in improving our electoral processes. It's part of national security, and I feel strongly about that. I'm going back to my constitutional law here, but I don't want to continue to have debate about this. But I believe he had the most electoral votes.

Anthony

So he won the election.

Jay Clayton

He followed our process, had the most electoral votes, was declared the winner, and

Anthony

who has the most electoral votes? Is it the person that wins or the person that loses?

Jay Clayton

I think that's your characterization.

Anthony

Isn't it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president's delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?

Jay Clayton

I think I gave you the answer, Anthony.

Sarah

I don't know about you. I think anytime the administration or Donald Trump is Talking about the 2020 election and alleging it was stolen is a moment in which they are persuading people not to vote Republican because people are tired of it. Most people don't believe it. And it doesn't in any way suggest that the president or the people around him are focused on making life better for Americans. Today, it looks as. So they're focused on pursuing this conspiracy theory about something that happened six years ago.

Asma Khalid

Yeah.

Anthony

You know, Democrats talked a lot in 2024 about January 6th and the attacks on the US Capitol and Donald Trump's efforts to undermine democracy, in their view. And it didn't sell with the American public. Donald Trump won. When you campaign, looking back, that tends to keep you, as you say, Sarah, from making a pitch to the American public for what you can deliver when you. From an elected official. And so if Donald Trump's sitting here relitigating the 2020 presidential election, then he's not talking about affordability. He's not talking about how he's going to end the war in Iran. He's not talking about these sorts of concerns that the American public has. He did start this speech, I will say, the first three or four minutes, talking about how great things are in this country and how America's hotter than ever and how Awful things were under Biden. So he did kind of make a general election pitch there. But he quickly got bogged down into the details of what he's alleging as election fraud.

Sarah

We started off this episode by talking about how normally when presidents give this kind of primetime national address, it's about moments of danger, national security, a really significant point in American history, and that this speech was a little bit different for that. It also wasn't carried live by some of the networks. Cbs, I think, and Ms. Now, which is the new name for msnbc, carried bits of it and then had reporters come in and fact check the president. I wonder if that's actually going to do him a favor, given what we're saying is that this is not necessarily what voters want to hear. It's not what they necessarily want their president to be focused on. That if the nation had all sat down to listen to the president, they might have been a little bit unimpressed what they by what they heard. And if people do ignore it to a large extent, perhaps that's for the best.

Anthony

If you're Donald Trump, I think that they probably will be satisfied that Donald Trump didn't get too far out over his skis here. He seemed to stick to his script. He didn't dwell on saying that he lost the election the way he sometimes does. He, he presented the evidence in a way where obviously people would draw that conclusion that he won in 2020, but it wasn't. He wasn't hitting people over the heads with it. So in that way, maybe they are relieved. Although he did kind of end with a little bit of media bashing. He talked about the media being part of this plot that they want to protect the radical left.

Donald Trump (speech excerpts)

In a rare move, NBC and ABC Fake News have both said that they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about because of the fact that they don't like the topic because they know how corrupt our system is and they don't want to reveal it. They and others in the media, part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason, they want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. They can't have a great country, and that's true. You can't have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses. They use our public multibillion dollar in value airways for absolutely no money. They pay nothing.

Anthony

So he couldn't help getting a jab into those who didn't cover his speech. But my feeling, Sarah, is that by next week we're not going to be talking about this speech. It's going to be washed away. And that the things, the issues that Americans care about, the economy first and foremost, the war in Iran and where that's going, that is going to be what this election, this midterm election is one and lost on while Donald Trump

Sarah

will probably still be berating Congress about passing the SAVE act and refusing to sign other legisl until they do. But yeah, that's, that's situation normal these days.

Anthony

Absolutely. It's just another day at the office.

Sarah

Well, night at the office for us. So I've got a little bit more broadcasting to do. I'm sure you've got something to write this evening. So yeah, as, as, as it's dark outside and we ought to be in bed, we should probably just say bye.

Anthony

Bye bye all.

Podcast Host/Producer

Thank you for listening to another episode. If you liked what you you heard, why not subscribe to AmericaSt on BBC Sounds or indeed wherever you get your podcasts. That way you will be notified every time we publish a new episode. We also want to hear your thoughts, your feedback, questions, anecdotes, ideas. So do keep them coming in. We do look at every single bit of correspondence that we get. So you can email us americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 443-33-01239480 and you can get involved in the AmericasT Discord server. The link for that is in the description and you can also Watch us on YouTube. You just search for Ameracast. Until next time. Bye bye.

Asma Khalid

Is the American Dream still possible? I'm Asma Khalid, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. One of the most successful exports the United States has ever sold the world. Is the American Dream that tantalizing promise of a better, freer, richer life. But is it still attainable?

Anthony

I feel like the American Dream is alive, but not well.

Asma Khalid

For more listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Is the American Dream still possible? I'm Asma Khalid, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. One of the most successful exports the United States has ever sold the world. Is the American Dream that tantalizing promise of a better, freer, richer life, but is it still attainable?

Anthony

I feel like the American Dream is alive, but not well.

Asma Khalid

For more listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.