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By Sofia Rubinson and Sam Howard
In a primetime White House address last night, President Donald Trump made a series of sweeping claims suggesting that U.S. elections are corrupt, insecure, and highly vulnerable to fraud. Citing newly declassified documents, the president also argued that intelligence agencies covered up the extent of Chinese interference in the 2020 election and suggested that China surreptitiously obtained voting information on 220 million Americans.
It was a lot to take in and sort out. For this special edition of Reality Check, NewsGuard sifted through Trump’s accusations and examined his purported evidence. Below we debunk three false claims advanced by the president, show how the White House address played into broader baseless narratives about election fraud that we have previously debunked, and explain the true focus of Chinese foreign interference efforts.
FALSE CLAIMS ADVANCED BY TRUMP IN HIS JULY 16 SPEECH
Trump’s speech included several provably false claims alleging that the integrity of U.S. elections has been undermined:
TRUMP: “Documents we are releasing prove that for many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump released a trove of documents during a primetime address to the nation that allies had hyped as a smoking gun that would prove his long-debunked allegation...