U.S. President Donald Trump declassified intelligence on Thursday that he maintained showed Chinese interference in U.S. elections, reviving his long-running attacks on election security despite a U.S. intelligence assessment that found no evidence Beijing affected the 2020 vote that he lost.
The 25-minute prime-time address underscored Trump’s effort to make election security a central political issue ahead of November’s midterm elections, when his fellow Republicans will be defending their slender congressional majorities.
Trump used his remarks to again press Republicans in Congress to pass legislation imposing new voter identification and citizenship requirements, despite longstanding findings that voter fraud in U.S. elections is rare. The bill has stalled in the Senate amid fierce Democratic opposition.
Trump said the declassified documents would reveal “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.” But many appeared to show the opposite, or were not related to U.S. election infrastructure at all.
The speech came at a challenging political moment for Trump and Republicans, with his approval rating weighed down by the unpopular Iran war and high energy prices. Trump only briefly mentioned the war at the outset, saying the U.S. was “winning big,” while listing a series of domestic accomplishments, including tax cuts and his immigration crackdown, before turning to election security.