Key events
Factcheck: elections expert debunks Trump speech claims
Speaking to reporters today, David Becker – the executive director of the non-partisan Center for Election Innovation & Research – said that Trump’s speech was ultimately “a dud”.
“There was absolutely nothing here that was news. Nothing here that even calls into question past elections. Certainly not the 2020 election,” Becker added.
On some of the president’s more specific claims of foreign election interference, namely that China obtained 220m voter records from the period of from 2020 to 2023, Becker said that it’s a known fact that China “has a policy of vacuuming up as much American data as it can”.
However, voter data is some of the easiest to obtain because each state has a public voter file. Those can often be purchased, or even retrieved off the internet in some states. These files have existed since the beginning of voter registration in the US, Becker notes.
He also said the key allegation from the Trump administration that China could vote on behalf of people is “100% false”.
“I could have a list of all the students at a particular university. That doesn’t mean I can change their grades, and that’s what’s happening here. Just having the data doesn’t give you an ability to access their voter record,” Becker said. “You need many, many more private, personally identifiable information points, things like driver’s license numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, which aren’t in this data.”
Trump also took to Truth Social today to claim that there were “great reviews” of his address to the nation on Thursday – where he repeated baseless claims undermining the electoral integrity of the 2020 election, and the safety of the election process at large in the US.
During his speech, Trump also tried to unveil new information – with scant evidence – that China’s interfered in the race that he lost to Joe Biden. This despite assessments from intelligence officials that no foreign actor, including China, attempted to alter any technical aspect of the 2020 voting process.
Donald Trump will start his day in Washington. Later, the president will travel to New York to attend a Fifa reception at 5:20pm ET — ahead of the World Cup final on Sunday. We’ll bring you the latest lines as he sets off.
‘Brazen corruption’: critics denounce Trump Media plan to sell priority access to Truth Social posts
Mark Sweney
Donald Trump’s media company is planning to charge for special high-speed access to Truth Social posts, including possibly his own, affecting national security and financial markets.
The move announced on Thursday would allow Wall Street trading firms and other institutions to get news first from top Truth Social contributors so they could profit off subsequent moves in stocks, bonds and interest rates.
Called Truth PSI, the new service comes amid a flurry of other deals by Trump and his family company that critics say are exploiting the presidency for profit.
It follows similar offers of paid access on rival platforms, although with one key difference: the most popular Truth Social poster is the president himself, and, as the biggest shareholder of the publicly traded parent company, he would benefit directly.
“He’s selling expedited, privileged access to information about what he is doing as president,” said Kathleen Clark of the Washington University School of Law and an expert in government conflict of interest rules. “It’s yet more brazen corruption, an improper exploitation of government power to enrich himself.”
The debate about how old is too old to serve in public office has resurfaced this week after the shock death of the Republican Lindsey Graham and the surprise return of Mitch McConnell, the 84-year-old senator who published a photo of himself in hospital after a long absence from the spotlight.
With rumors continuing to swirl around Donald Trump’s health, why is it that US politicians seem to cling on to power for so long?
The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland speaks to Alexis Coe, a presidential historian and columnist for the New York Times Book Review, about whether the US is becoming a gerontocracy.
Kremlin says Russia has never interfered in US elections
When asked about the unverified comments made by Donald Trump, who on Thursday accused China of interfering in the 2020 presidential election, the Kremlin said Russia has never interfered in US elections, Reuters reports.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Moscow categorically rejected all allegations of past election meddling.
A 2021 US intelligence community assessment determined that Russia conducted influence operations aimed at denigrating Biden’s campaign – but concluded that no foreign actor, China included, attempted to alter any technical aspect of the 2020 voting process.
Our China correspondent Amy Hawkins has provided some context Donald Trump’s unverified claims that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election:
Trump’s remarks were at odds with the conciliatory tone he has struck with Beijing since he travelled to China to meet Xi Jinping in May. The Chinese president has been invited to Washington in September.
A 2021 US intelligence community assessment concluded that no foreign actor, including China, attempted to alter any technical aspect of the 2020 voting process. The report said that while Russia had conducted influence operations aimed at denigrating Biden’s campaign, China did not deploy any interference efforts intended to change the outcome of the election.
US intelligence assessed that China did not see either a Trump or a Biden victory as advantageous to Beijing and it was therefore not worth the risk of damaging the US-China relationship with interference efforts.
China has long denied claims by western governments, including the UK, that it has meddled in the politics of other countries. Several European countries have raised the alarm about Chinese spying operations in their legislatures. Last year a former parliamentary aide for Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party was convicted of spying for China.
Trump prompts constitutionality concerns over his call to revoke broadcast licenses
Several major networks declined to air Donald Trump’s primetime televised address on Thursday, citing concerns that the content could be politically partisan or inflammatory.
CNN, ABC and NBC chose not to air the speech live, but CBS, Fox News and MS Now (formerly MSNBC) aired at least large portions of the speech live. Some ABC station station affiliates – including the Washington DC station owned by right-leaning broadcaster Sinclair – also chose to air the speech.
“We’ll be monitoring what the president says tonight, as we always do, but aren’t taking it live, given the president has a well-documented history of saying blatantly false things about elections,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, the network’s 9pm anchor, told viewers on Thursday.
Although television networks are not are not legally obliged to grant a president’s request to air a speech live – Joe Biden and Barack Obama had requests for White House speeches to be broadcast live refused during their presidencies – the move drew rebukes from Trump, who called for their broadcast licenses to be revoked.
“Too many Americans have fought and died to defend American democracy,” Bernie Sanders, a Democratic senator from Vermont, posted on X. “All of us, regardless of our political views, must stand together against this dangerous president who is seeking to undermine our Constitution and our basic freedoms.”
More here:
How Trump’s address was bluntly aimed at destabilizing the US electoral system
Sam Levine
Donald Trump used the imprimatur of the presidency and United States intelligence agencies to try to undermine confidence in American elections in a presidential address on Thursday that seemed bluntly aimed at laying the groundwork for further destabilizing the electoral system before November’s midterm elections.
In his address from the East Room at the White House, Trump attempted to give the impression that his administration had uncovered new bombshell findings about vulnerabilities in the US’s election system. China, he claimed, had illicitly acquired voter information on 220 million Americans (many states allow anyone to buy voter roll information; Trump did not say the means by which the nation acquired the data). He claimed that China interfered in other ways to undermine his 2020 campaign and that the information had been suppressed by intelligence officials.
Donald Trump repeated calls in his Thursday speech for the passage of the Save America Act – a rebranded and expanded version of last year’s Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) act, which passed in the US House but didn’t get a vote in the Senate.
This year’s version includes a very strict voter ID requirement for casting a ballot and a provision that requires states to regularly turn their voter rolls over to the Department of Homeland Security, in addition to criminal liability for election officials who register a voter without proper documentary proof of citizenship.
Last month, US federal court blocked an attempt by Trump to bypass Congress on the Save Act via executive order. This week, House Republicans reupped their efforts to resurrect the bill by linking the measure to an unrelated spending bill and passing both largely along party lines.
After Thursday’s speech, Republicans voiced their support of the Save Act, with representatives like Tim Burchett of Tennessee urging Americans to call their senators.
“We are going to lose our country if we don’t pass the dadgum Save America Act,” Burchett posted on X. “Call your senator and tell them to save our great nation.”
Democrats began denouncing the Save Act even before Trump took to the podium, with Kamala Harris, the former vice-president and the defeated Democratic candidate in the 2024 presidential election, leading the charge.
“Here is what you need to know: The 2020 election was not stolen; we won and he lost,” she wrote on social media. “The Save Act is voter suppression. It is part of a larger agenda of conservatives trying to steal power from the people.”
The denounciations continued after his speech.
“Tonight, Donald Trump reminded us again just how desperate he is to steal the midterm elections. The so-called Save America Act isn’t about stopping fraud, it’s about stopping voters,” JB Pritzker, governor of Illinois, posted on X.
“After listening to the president’s rambling address, I want him to know that the Save America Act is going NOWHERE in the Senate,” Patty Murray, a Democatric senator from Washington state, posted on X. “It belongs in the trash with the rest of Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories. America, use your vote and your voice to save our democracy.”
Read more about the Save Act here:
China, Democrats decry Trump’s latest unverified claims of election interference
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of US politics.
Donald Trump used a 25-minute primetime televised address on Thursday to make unverified claims about China interfering with the 2020 presidential election and cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process.
However, the heavily redacted documents released by the White House, purportedly to support the president’s allegations, appeared to undercut the idea that China intended to interfere in the 2020 election – claims which had already been investigated by intelligence officials, who concluded with high confidence in 2021 that China “did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US presidential election”.
On Friday, China’s foreign ministry said the accusations were “pure fabrication” and amounted to “a malicious smear campaign”, Reuters reports.
Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told reporters at a briefing that Beijing has no interest in interfering with US elections and has never done so. “We urge the US to take a long, hard look at itself and stop making unfounded accusations against China,” the spokesperson said.
Democrats were also quick to decry Trump’s messaging, with Mark Warner, a Democratic senator from Virginia and vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, saying that the president’s speech “was just lies and long-debunked conspiracies”.
“This is all just a prelude to interfere in our midterms — don’t fall for it,” Warner posted on X.
“If Trump wins, it’s a fair election. If he loses, there was fraud. Does he realize the election he’s talking about happened under his watch as President? The only reason Trump is bringing this up now is to distract from the fact he’s failed to make Americans’ lives better,” Mark Kelly, a Democratic senator from Arizona, posted on X.
More to come.
