Trump spreads election claims about China, noncitizens
US President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on July 16, 2026.
Saul Loeb | Via Reuters
President Donald Trump in a national address Thursday night sowed doubts about the security of U.S. election systems and voter information, alleging widespread meddling by China in the 2020 cycle among numerous other claims that were quickly challenged by fact checkers.
Trump, who has falsely claimed for years that his loss to former President Joe Biden in the 2020 race was “rigged” due to widespread fraud, claimed in the primetime speech that newly declassified intelligence reveals “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.”
The roughly 25-minute primetime speech came as the president and his allies work to impose major changes in U.S. elections ahead of the November midterms via redistricting, adding procedural steps for Americans to vote and casting doubt on the validity of the country’s electoral systems. Polls show Democrats are favored to retake the U.S. House amid Trump’s slumping popularity, and Trump has expressed concerns about investigations he could face if Democrats control one or both chambers of Congress.
Trump alleged Thursday that the documents posted to the White House website show China carried out the “illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files” starting in 2020, when Trump was president.
Other files show the “deep state” worked to hide the “extent of China’s sinister election meddling,” Trump said, while claiming China did not want him to win reelection in 2020.
But Trump, in early January of 2021, was shown classified intelligence gathered on foreign threats to the 2020 election, according to the declassified assessment from the U.S. intelligence community.
“We assess 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,” that report said.
It later adds that intelligence officials assessed, “Beijing did not interfere with election infrastructure, including vote tabulation or the transmission of election results.”
That contradicts Trump’s claim in Thursday’s speech that Chinese meddling activities “included an attempt to manufacture illegal ballots” for Biden.
Trump also repeated his calls for the Republican-led Congress to pass the “SAVE America Act,” the controversial bill that purports to crack down on noncitizens meddling in U.S. elections by requiring photo identification to vote and proof of citizenship to register, among other provisions. Opponents say the measure would disenfranchise voters, particularly those who are low-income or people of color.
Trump also claimed that a review by the Department of Homeland Security found about 278,000 non-citizens “who are registered to vote in federal elections.”
But Trump did not say how DHS conducted that review. And he did not claim that those non-U.S. citizens actually voted in U.S. elections. It is already illegal for them to do so, and documented instances of noncitizen voting are very rare.
Federal law already requires citizenship to vote in U.S. elections, and data show very few instances in which ballots are cast by noncitizens.
But Trump has made the election bill his top priority ahead of the next elections. He has even refused to sign other legislation into law until the SAVE America Act reaches his desk. And his allies in the House have stalled other measures from reaching the president as they press to pass the election law, which doesn’t have the votes to clear Congress.
Trump’s Republican Party seeks to keep its majorities in the House and Senate past the midterms, but it faces major challenges. The party holding the White House historically underperforms in midterm elections, and Democrats aim to capitalize on what polls have shown are Americans’ negative views on the economy, the Iran war and Trump himself.
Trump’s election efforts
People vote during primary elections at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, U.S., June 23, 2026.
Eduardo Munoz | Reuters
Trump has sought to challenge election results he opposes using every lever at his disposal.
After his 2020 election loss, Trump and his allies filed dozens of lawsuits challenging states’ tallies, but none of the results were overturned and no credible evidence of election-flipping fraud was presented.
The efforts to overturn the 2020 outcome culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, when a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the center of U.S. government and forced lawmakers to temporarily flee their chambers for safety. Trump later pardoned or commuted the sentences of virtually all defendants involved in the riot.
In late January, an election office in Georgia — a top target of Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 race — was raided by the FBI, which sought 2020 election-related records. Trump’s then-Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was spotted at that raid.
After Gabbard announced her resignation in May, Trump picked federal housing regulatory chief Bill Pulte as her acting replacement.
Pulte, who has gained a reputation as a loyal attack dog for Trump, is expected to join the president for the speech, MS NOW previously reported.
The Department of Justice, meanwhile, has filed lawsuits in numerous states seeking to obtain detailed voter registration data. The DOJ has argued it needs the information to ensure compliance with federal election laws. More than a dozen such cases have been dismissed by federal judges so far.
