President Trump Reminds Us What We Already Know

Our Voting Systems ARE Corrupt And Broken

The most crucial takeaway from President Trump’s primetime address last night on election integrity is the one perhaps easiest to overlook: he did not tell us anything new. He did add receipts documenting much of what was already known.

For many years, I’ve called for a bold, swift, and decisive action to protect the integrity of America’s elections. Every American deserves to know that when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately in a system, and that is to make that system secure. One where cheating and interference are not just difficult, but virtually impossible.

Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard. Tonight, I’m announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence, revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our Election infrastructure. This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes—and really exposes like levels never thought possible—to hacking, exploitation and foreign interference.

The declassified documents, which are available on the White House website, detail intelligence assessments, intelligence gathering, and FBI investigations in a wide range of efforts by multiple bad actors to undermine and subvert elections in the United States. However, none of the points discussed by President Trump were new.

If that sounds like a criticism of Donald Trump, consider this: Corporate media claims President Trump “exaggerates” the security problems. Corporate media claims President Trump “overstates” America’s level of exposure.

Corporate media does not say President Trump lied. Corporate media concedes the problems exist, but minimizes their severity and importance.

President Trump told us much that we already knew about US election, which is both the point and the problem: the issues surrounding our elections have been known for a long time, and yet they are still not resolved. Fixes have still not been put in place.

Even corporate media does not dispute this, even as they try to minimize it because Trump.

Our election systems are broken, and the people who could fix them haven’t—and won’t.

Corporate Media Wants To Ignore The President But Can’t

Even before President Trump’s address, corporate media made clear their intentions to undermine and discredit his allegations, starting by refusing to air the speech, citing concerns about airing “false information”.

The big picture: The address, which is expected to center around election security, put ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX between a rock and a hard place: air potentially false information about the 2020 election, or risk backlash from the White House and a confrontational Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

As I stated yesterday, this “concern” of theirs is pure hogwash and horse hockey. Axios simply lied that there was any actual dilemma, ethical or otherwise, challenging the media.

There is no rock and there is no hard place. That is pure fiction.

When the President of the United States speaks, it’s news.

If he lies (think Bill Clinton “I did not have sex with that woman…Ms. Lewinsky”), it’s news.

If he calls Democrats out for being anti-American, it’s news.

If he calls out John Roberts for writing an unconstitutional and legally void ruling in Trump v Barbara, it’s news.

That corporate media refused to air the speech was a blatant admission that corporate media did not want people to watch the speech and hear what Donald Trump had to say.

Ask yourself why that is.

Ironically, despite wanting people to ignore President Trump, corporate media could not and still cannot ignore President Trump. During and after the speech corporate media was “debunking” and “fact-checking” Trump’s claims.

The New York Times sought to rebut Trump’s accusations about China simply by saying China denied them:

China rejected President Trump claims, and said it “has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.” The outcome of elections “is determined by the votes of the American people,” Liu Chang, a spokeman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a statement.

Denials, of course, are not evidence and they are not rebuttals. That the New York Times would consider a denial by China as sufficient response to the accusation says more about the Gray Lady than Donald Trump, none of it very good.

USA Today similarly tried to downplay the China angle—but had to concede that there was substance to it.

In March 2021, Avril Haines, director of national intelligence in the Biden administration, released a report that said the intelligence community had “high confidence” that China did not try to interfere with the 2020 U.S. election but considered ‒ though never deployed ‒ an attempt to change the outcome of the election.

In the end, China did not view either a Biden or Trump win as being advantageous enough to risk getting caught, according to the council’s March 2021 report on foreign threats in the election.

The National Intelligence Officer for Cyber expressed a “minority view,” detailed in the same report, that China took some steps to undermine Trump’s reelection chances, primarily through social media and public statements.

Ironically, after President Trump was first elected in 2016, Russia allegedly performing the same actions as China were seen by the US intelligence community and corporate media as damning evidence of election interference by Russia.

If Russia’s actions were unacceptable election interference in 2016, China’s actions were unacceptable election interference in 2020.

The Biden Administration Acknowledged China’s Meddling

What corporate media conveniently overlooks is that China’s harvesting of election-related information and use of influence operations was conceded by the same intelligence community that claimed China did not actually “meddle” in US elections.

China probably also continued longstanding efforts to gather information on US voters and public opinion; political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior government officials. We assess Beijing probably sought to use this information to predict electoral outcomes and to inform its efforts to influence US policy toward China under either election outcome, as it has during all election cycles since at least 2008 and considers an acceptable tool of statecraft.

The question has never been “is China meddling?” All sides agree that China is meddling. The question is how seriously do people take that meddling, and what do they propose to do about it?

Corporate media and the Democrats make it plain they do not take China’s meddling seriously and do not propose America do anything about it.

Ask yourself why that is.

Bear in mind that during the 2024 election cycle, Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center identified Chinese efforts to undermine the election campaigns of multiple Republican Congressional candidates.

While Chinese influence operations have sought to denigrate the American political process broadly, they have focused less on this year’s presidential race and more on down-ballot races, presumably in hopes of blunting anti-Chinese sentiment in the House and Senate. The accounts also attacked Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is not up for re-election this year, the report said.

Earlier in 2024, cyber-security firm CyberX reported having identified a large network of fake social media accounts run by China.

A senior intelligence source speaking to National Security News on the grounds of anonymity said: “This report clearly demonstrates that the Chinese government wants to use covert social media accounts to interfere with the US elections. One can only assume that the reasons behind this are that China wants the next administration to be damaging to the US but beneficial to its own interests.”

CyberCX noted that many of the accounts in the Green Cicada network appear to be dormant, so they are not activity posting content. The firm said that this suggests that they may be part of a “sleeping giant” ready to become more active as the U.S. election in November approaches.

The accounts in the network have been increasing their activity since around April 2024.

China has been intruding into US elections. That has been reported time and time again. Yet President Trump is criticized for reminding us of this?

Ask yourself why that is.

We Know There Were Voting Irregularities In 2020

Corporate media’s challenge in wanting to dismiss and deny President Trump’s claims is that it is already been established that there were major voting irregularities in 2020.

In Georgia, the Fulton County Elections Board admitted to mishandling hundreds of thousands of early votes.

The county says approximately 315,000 votes cast during early voting were certified without the required signatures on tabulator tapes from poll workers.

Those tapes are printed from ballot tabulator machines to verify that the number of voters is equal to the number of votes.

Allegations of vote fraud and numerous ballot irregularities have dogged Maricopa County, Arizona, since the 2020 election, and the FBI launched an investigation into 2020 voting procedures there earlier this year.

As for the security and integrity of Dominion voting machines, that the systems have significant software flaws has been known by the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency for years. In 2022 the agency again admitted the flaws were real but insisted no one had take advantage of them:

“While these vulnerabilities present risks that should be promptly mitigated, CISA has no evidence that these vulnerabilities have been exploited in any elections,” reads the draft CISA advisory, which the agency shared in a briefing with state and local officials on Friday.

As a matter of basic logic, however, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is also not the point, nor should it be. Where there are security flaws in anything, there is real danger those flaws will be exploited.

Yet somehow because some claim there is “no evidence” those flaws were exploited, the security concerns they raise are not a big deal.

Personally, I consider potential fraud a very big deal.

Election fraud is real. It is real enough that the Heritage Foundation maintains an online database of proven cases of election and ballot fraud.

Why Not Pass The Save America Act?

President Trump concluded his brief address with a demand that Congress get off its collective hindquarters and pass the Save America Act.

But most importantly, addressing this crisis of election security demands that Congress must pass the Save America Act. How easy is that to do unless you want to cheat? The only reason you wouldn’t do it is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get away or can’t get elected any other way.

Democrats, of course, have dug in their heels about passing this or any election reform legislation.

Is Donald Trump wrong about the Democrats’ motives? Consider what Democratic Senator Elise Slotkin of Michigan said of the Save America Act: it would make it hard for Democrats to win.

During a June 6 address to Indiana’s state Democratic Party, Slotkin celebrated the Senate’s rejection of the SAVE America Act, in which she claimed the bill would allow the Trump administration to “rig our democracy.”

“It would be hard for any Democrat in any state to win any election,” Slotkin said of the SAVE America Act.

Voter integrity and voter identification legislation would put Democrats at a permanent disadvantage. That is what Democrats are saying.

Ask yourself why that is.

This is why I say the real takeaway from President Trump’s speech is that he didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

We know China—and other countries—do their damnedest to interfere in our elections. We have known this for years.

We know voting irregularities occurred in 2020. We have known this for years.

We know Dominion voting machines have serious security flaws. We have known this for years.

We know our election systems are broken. We know there are serious and substantial reasons for people not to trust our election systems.

We even know what to do about it.

The only thing we don’t know is whether or not we will do anything about it. On that score I have my hopes—but I also have my doubts.