China has hit back at President Donald Trump after he accused it of carrying out “the largest compromise of election data in history” beginning with the 2020 U.S. presidential election, just one of numerous schemes he claims “deep state” actors within the American government concealed from him.
Trump claimed in a primetime address Thursday evening that raw intelligence suggests Beijing may have sought to “manufacture illegal ballots,” adding that China also managed to acquire 220 million sensitive files about U.S. voters (such data is publicly available for purchase, however).
The president also claimed that the rival superpower had sought to pay journalists to write false stories about him, that top U.S. officials had kept key intelligence out of his daily briefings and revived a MAGA conspiracy theory tying in Venezuela’s involvement.
Repsonding, China’s Foreign Ministry said Trump’s allegations had no factual basis, reiterating that the country adheres to the principle of non-intervention in other state’s affairs and had no interest in influencing U.S. elections.
Former national security officials and Democrats have likewise said the president’s speech was filled with falsehoods and exaggerations.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom called it “the ramblings of a mad king.”
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Trump today
- China hits back at Donald Trump’s 2020 election hacking allegations
- President alleges sprawling Chinese plot in primetime TV address
- Trump claims ‘deep state’ actors within his own government covered up meddling
- President calls on FBI to revive alleged 2020 investigation about Michigan
Donald Trump alleges sprawling Chinese election hacking plot in primetime address
09:05 , Joe SommerladWith 109 days remaining until voters decide the balance of power in the next Congress, President Donald Trump used a rare primetime TV address to accuse unnamed national security officials of hiding information about the security of America’s elections and alleged Chinese efforts to interfere in the election he lost nearly six years ago.
Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Trump said he was releasing “critical intelligence” showing “shocking vulnerabilities” in America’s election system in a bid to pressure the current Republican-led Congress to pass partisan voting restriction legislation he has deemed essential to helping his party retain control of the House and Senate.
Offering no evidence, the president claimed American elections are vulnerable “to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference” and accused the People’s Republic of China of carrying out “the largest compromise of election data in history” by acquiring election data – much of which is commercially available for purchase by political campaigns and other interested parties.
“They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn't so hot, when actually your president has done a great job, and they did everything possible to do exactly that,” he said.
China’s Foreign Ministry has since responded by saying Trump’s allegations have no factual basis, reiterating that the country adheres to the principle of non-intervention in other state’s affairs and has no interest in influencing U.S. elections.
Andrew Feinberg has the story.
Trump claims deep state plot’ covered up China efforts to ‘undermine’ 2020 election
China hits back at Trump’s election hacking allegations
08:45 , Joe SommerladResponding to the president’s primetime attack last night, China’s Foreign Ministry has just said the allegations have no factual basis.
It adds that Beijing adheres to the principle of non-intervention in other state’s affairs and has no interest in influencing U.S. elections.
Earlier, the Chinese Embassy in Washington told Reuters that China “has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections.”
Democratic senator worries Trump speech is prelude to military at polls
08:30 , Josh MarcusPresident Trump’s elections speech, which alleged widespread vulnerabilities in the U.S. voting system, could be just the beginning, according to one Democratic senator.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin fears the president’s repeated claims that elections are unsafe could be a prelude to sending the military to the polls, which could intimidate voters or local officials.
“The president refuses to rule out, as does his cabinet, sending in uniformed military,” Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, told MS Now of the possibility, which has inspired her to propose legislation barring such a step.
“What if they don’t have a warrant?” she added. “These are some really scary kind of tabletop exercises [and] things that we’re having here because the president has made clear this is not a joke to him…He’s willing to really do anything to ‘win’ in November.”
Conservative journalist helping Trump hunt for conspiracies acknowledges 'zero evidence' foreign power turned 2020 race
07:45 , Josh MarcusA conservative journalist just inadvertently punctured a hole in President Trump’s claims that documents show a sprawling Chinese conspiracy to steal American elections.
“All I can acknowledge is what the intelligence shows,” Just the News founder John Solomon, who is part of a White House elections task force on the subject, told MS Now on Thursday. “I only know the intelligence community has zero evidence that a foreign power flipped a vote in 2020, ‘22, and ‘24.”
“I’m still researching,” he added.
DHS appears to soften claims about thousands of illegally registered non-citizen voters
07:00 , Josh Marcus
The White House claims it has discovered evidence of hundreds of thousands of non-citizens who are illegally registered to vote, part of a series of explosive election-related claims it has made alongside President Trump’s speech tonight.
“According to a D.H.S. review of state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections,” reads a White House webpage detailing the allegations. “Since Democrat states refused to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher—yet even this limited analysis found more than a quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote.”
Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has been a bit more measured, perhaps wary of how his predecessor was slammed for making unfounded claims about immigration issues.
On X, he wrote that DHS “has identified over 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote in just 4 U.S. states.”
What the administration has not shown, however, is that wrongly registered people have actually voted en masse or changed the outcome of elections.
Countless reviews of the 2020 election have shown that the results were valid, and actual voter fraud is an extremely rare crime that has not been shown to sway elections.
Read the full files from Trump's 2020 election info dump
06:15 , Josh Marcus
The Independent is actively reviewing the trove of documents the Trump administration released on Thursday to support its claims of wide-ranging vulnerabilities in U.S. election systems and a 2020 interference campaign by China.
If you want to take a look for yourself, here’s a link to the White House portal with the documents.
MAGA influencer wants Trump to blast China with tariffs over 2020 claims
05:30 , Josh MarcusDemocrats and Republicans alike are asking the same question right now: If China really did compromise 2020 elections, as President Trump claims, what is the White House going to do about it?
One answer, according to right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, is to launch stepped-up tariffs on Beijing.
“This was an attack on our democracy,” Posobiec told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in an interview on Thursday. “This was the greatest attack on our republic since 9/11, and it was done so by the Chinese Communist Party. And so as such, we should start by seeing an immediate ratchet up to 100 percent, 1000 percent on all Chinese goods.”
“That should happen tomorrow,” he added. “President Trump drops that down, drops the hammer on the Chinese Communist Party, then you watch how fast things change.”
Trump claims deep state plot’ covered up China efforts to ‘undermine’ 2020 election
What do Trump’s declassified election conspiracy documents show — and how much was known already?
04:36 , Josh MarcusPresident Donald Trump has spent more than a decade spreading false and inflated claims about election outcomes and how the nation’s elections are run. His primetime address on Thursday was no exception.
The president alleged “shocking vulnerabilities in election infrastructure” and claimed our “election system” is “dangerously” exposed to “hacking, exploitation and foreign interference.”
But it appears much of the newly declassified material he announced Thursday evening echoes or reinterprets previously disclosed information that was already known to intelligence officials, including during his first administration.
Importantly, nothing in the materials supports any allegations that any votes were manipulated by fraud or foreign actors to have changed election outcomes.
Election officials and voting rights advocates fear the president’s remarks, which he says are meant to protect elections, will instead continue to sow deep distrust in their legitimacy to serve his own interests.
Alex Woodward has the story.
What Trump said about election security — and what we already know
News networks offer disclaimers on explosive Trump speech
04:00 , Josh MarcusNo one wants a multi-million dollar defamation suit on their hands.
As news networks sought to cover President Trump’s major elections speech tonight, they issued careful disclaimers about the Republican’s statements.
After all, 2020 election conspiracies on air helped lead to Fox News paying out a whopping $787 million in a defamation suit.
So, as the big networks again had to wade into the waters of 2020 election info, they tread carefully.
On CBS News, anchor Tony Dokoupil acknowledged the president’s penchant for false claims about the election.
”Much of what the president had said on this topic has been false,” Dokoupil said. “Most notably, of course, the claim that he won the 2020 election, when of course he did not.”
Fox News, meanwhile, had words of caution about Trump’s claims that voting machines could have major vulnerabilities.
"Fox News has not seen that evidence yet [and] is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president's statement and claims,” one anchor said.
Former State Department official questions lack of action steps after Trump alleges China conspiracy
03:25 , Josh MarcusPresident Trump’s speech tonight was heavy on accusations and light on action, according to Biden administration State Department official Matthew Miller.
“So the president has supposedly just unveiled a massive plot by China to interfere in our elections, and he’s going to do nothing to China in response?” Miller wrote on X. “No sanctions, no countermeasures? Not even a phone call to his buddy Xi? Come on.”
Former Defense and CIA chief says Trump speech full of 'disproven claims'
03:21 , Josh MarcusLeon Panetta, who previously held roles as head of the CIA and Department of Defense, claims Donald Trump’s speech tonight was full of speculation and exaggeration.
“As someone who spent my career protecting America’s national security, I know the difference between legitimate security threats and political narratives,” Panetta said in a statement along with the group Issue One. “Our intelligence professionals concluded there was no evidence of cyberattacks altering votes or changing outcomes in the 2020 elections.”
“Recycling disproven claims about an election that took place six years ago doesn’t strengthen our security – it distracts from the real work of protecting the elections ahead,” he added. “It is incumbent upon every elected and administrative official to push back against the president’s lies tonight.”
'Some bulls***': Democratic election officials react to Trump speech
03:15 , Josh MarcusDemocratic election officials reacted with skepticism on Thursday to President Trump’s major elections speech, which appears to have combined a variety of MAGA conspiracy theories with previously disclosed evidence.
“That was some bulls***,” Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) Chair Cisco Aguilar said in a statement.
PHOTOS: Trump officials look on as president gives conspiratorial 2020 elections speech
02:55 , Josh Marcus
Trump claims ‘deep state’ actors in his own government covered up Chinese ‘election interference’
02:51 , Josh MarcusWith 110 days remaining until voters decide the balance of power in the next Congress, Donald Trump used a rare prime-time address to accuse unnamed national security officials of hiding information about the security of America’s elections and alleged Chinese efforts to interfere in the election he lost nearly six years ago.
Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Trump said he was releasing “critical intelligence” showing “shocking vulnerabilities” in America’s election system in a bid to pressure the current Republican-led Congress to pass partisan voting restriction legislation he has deemed essential to helping his party retain control of the House and Senate.
Citing no evidence, the president claimed American elections are vulnerable “to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference” and accused the People’s Republic of China of carrying out “the largest compromise of election data in history” by acquiring election data — much of which is commercially available for purchase by political campaigns and other interested parties.
“They wanted to just make you sound like your president wasn't so hot, when actually your president has done a great job, and they did everything possible to do exactly that,” he said.
Andrew Feinberg has the story:
Trump claims ‘deep state’ actors in covered up Chinese ‘election interference’
Trump fuels MAGA conspiracy theory about Venezuela in elections speech
02:50 , Josh MarcusAs expected, President Donald Trump’s speech included references to alleged election vulnerabilities in Venezuela, which MAGA allies of the president have alleged spilled into U.S. elections.
“Today, we are releasing documents that show the CIA obtained reporting of a specific plot to do a big number in favor of the corrupt Maduro regime in Venezuela,” Trump said.
“This reporting included precise details about methods to…digitally alter vote totals in ways that could not be detected even with an audit, no matter how deep they went.”
Here’s more on the GOP Venezuela angle, courtesy of Alex Woodward, who had this look at the dubious theory ahead of Trump’s speech.
Is Trump getting his 2020 election revenge against Venezuela?
Trump alleges info about Chinese election attacks was kept out of presidential briefings
02:28 , Josh Marcus“Dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China's election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing,” Trump claimed. “These were briefings I would get almost every day. Everything was kept out.”
Trump calls on FBI to revive alleged 2020 investigation about Michigan
02:27 , Josh MarcusThe president said he is calling on federal law enforcement to revive an alleged 2020 investigation into voter fraud in 2020 in Michigan.
“The documents state that some canvassers admitted to FBI agents that they signed voter registration forms in other people's names, submitted fraudulent registration for people who did not exist, and received gift cards tied to their number of applications that they produced,” Trump claimed. “In other words, it was pay, play, and cheat. The FBI agents working on the case believe that crimes were committed, yet the Biden Department of Justice slow-walked the investigation and killed it.”
Trump claims security officials underplayed threat of election vulnerabilities
02:20 , Josh MarcusThe president alleges Americans have been misled by U.S. officials about the extent of vulnerabilities in U.S. election infrastructure.
“Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems,” he said.
Trump claims China carried out 'stunning' election scheme beginning in 2020
02:17 , Josh MarcusIn a highly anticipated Thursday night speech, President Donald Trump accused China of carrying out “the largest compromise of election data in history” beginning with the 2020 election.
The scheme allegedly netted China 220 million files about U.S. voters.
The Republican further claimed U.S. officials concealed the nature of the threat from him.
Catch up: What the intel community has previously said about 2020 election meddling
02:15 , Josh Marcus
Report shows Russia attempted to influence 2020 election by ‘supporting’ Trump
