The nation’s address belongs, in the American institutional grammar, to the most solemn register of the presidential voice: a rare format reserved for wars, crises, and national mourning. Donald Trump has gradually shifted its use toward the partisan register, but the speech delivered on the evening of July 16 marks an additional step, in both its content and its function.
The president spent the first minutes of his address outlining an exaggerated assessment of his second term. He advances claims that cannot be independently verified or are contradicted by data — “zero irregular entries in fourteen months,” “a homicide rate at the lowest level since 1900,” a country that “was dead” and would today be more “hot” than ever — as well as foreign policy dossiers repainted as dazzling successes, from Venezuela to Iran, whose “fruits” are promised “very, very soon.” More striking still, this ledger is punctuated by invitations to consult government platforms on the president’s behalf (trumprx.gov, trumpaccounts.gov): the solemn address borrows the vocabulary of advertising, signaling an acknowledged blur between the presidential office, personal branding, and a perpetual campaign.
The reveal at the heart of this speech rests on one sentence: China would have conducted, starting in 2020, “the largest data breach of electoral history.” This assertion performs a double shift. On one hand, it seeks to substitute Beijing for Moscow in the narrative of interference, even though American intelligence services have repeatedly identified Russia as the primary actor behind electoral meddling and Donald Trump as the beneficiary of that assistance. On the other hand, the accusation leans on a second narrative, that of a “deep state” housed within intelligence agencies, the media, and counterweights: a motif long favored by Trump, whose desire to rewrite the Russia dossier of 2016 already formed the backdrop of his first impeachment proceeding. In a paradox, this deep state would have allowed Trump to win elections under Obama and then under Biden, yet would have managed to rig an election during Trump’s own term.
This address cannot be understood without its aims of discursive reconfiguration. With less than four months to midterm elections that polls suggest will be unfavorably disposed toward Republicans (who could lose the House and the Senate), the administration multiplies initiatives aimed at reshaping the electoral architecture itself: pressure for the passage of the SAVE America Act, lawsuits by the Department of Justice to obtain state voter files — more than a dozen lawsuits already rejected by federal judges — and court orders directed at states regarding their voter rolls.
Claiming the authority of declassified intelligence to establish that the system is “catastrophically” vulnerable, the speech constructs a base of elements that are more or less verifiable, mobilizable later to justify exceptional measures or challenge unfavorable results. This is precisely how Steve Bannon frames it, writing to CNN that there must be “an immediate national security emergency over the midterm elections” and that the speech “provides a powerful predicate,” before declaring on his program that the midterms will be “rigged, as all elections have been.”
The linkage of a geopolitical crisis — the intensifying Cold War with China — to a domestic dynamic should not be underestimated. For what the president here replays is the grand lie he requires his supporters to accept — to see him as the victor of the 2020 election — at the very moment when purges strike at the military leadership and personal enrichment tied to market movements becomes institutionalized: the very day of the speech, Trump Media announced “Truth API,” a paid feed selling to Wall Street in a few milliseconds access to the president’s verbal outbursts, which are now known to move markets.
It is precisely because these words are chaotic, and as always spectacularly startling, that they must be read between the lines: their apparent disorder conceals a speech that tests, shifts, and prepares.
Good evening. Before I begin, I am proud to announce that our country is safer, stronger, and far more prosperous than it has ever been. We are thriving. Just over two years ago, we inherited an economic and social calamity, after the worst inflation in 48 years, with borders wide open, letting in millions from around the world, including criminals of all kinds, and 11,888 murderers, many of whom had killed more than once.
We had transgender everything, men in women’s sports, crime ravaging our cities, and the world mocking us as a nation. Now, that is over. Two years ago, our country was dead. Today, we are the hottest country in the world. America is respected like never before.
We have more money invested in the United States than at any other moment in our history.
More Americans are at work today than ever before. This week, it was announced that inflation had fallen by its largest monthly amount in more than six years, just now. It has just been published. The media reported it and we accept it: the best figure in six years.
The tax cuts of our “Great, Big, Beautiful Bill” are saving thousands and thousands of dollars for hard-working families, thanks to provisions such as: no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no payroll tax for our wonderful seniors, as well as the deduction of interest on a loan used to buy a car, but only if that car is made in America.
And a 100 percent depreciation for our job-creating businesses. Our stock markets are at their highest levels in many years, in fact, at all-time highs. And your 401(k) plans, your pensions, and your retirement accounts hit record highs every day, the highest in history.
For years, we paid the highest price in the world for prescription drugs. Today we pay the lowest price thanks to my “Nation of America First” policy, because I’ve managed to ensure that the rest of the world and the pharmaceutical companies act responsibly. Drug prices fall by 70, 80, and 90 percent. Trumprx.gov to reduce the cost of healthcare. You should visit trumprx.gov and take advantage. But the cost of healthcare is falling significantly thanks to what we have done with prescription drugs.
And with the Trump accounts, every child in America now has access to a tax-advantaged investment account to save for their future. Billions and billions of dollars are being invested, handed over by companies and individuals to take care of our children, so that by the age of 18 they may have hundreds of thousands of dollars in their accounts, giving them a great start in life.
So, go to trumpaccounts.gov and enroll your child, or any child you wish to enroll.
Our borders, once open, have been transformed into the safest in our history, with zero illegal entries into the United States in the last fourteen months. It’s truly zero.
No one thought this possible. We had the worst border in the history of our country, and now we have the best. Crime is falling nationwide, with a homicide rate at the lowest since 1900, over 125 years ago. We are making a record investment in our armed forces, and we have by far the strongest and most capable military in the world.
I built it during my first term, and, unfortunately, we are compelled to use it now. We have won in Venezuela, which now works with us to produce millions and millions of barrels of oil. We are also winning broadly in Iran, and you will see the fruits of this work very, very soon. America is back and thriving.
But we still face a major challenge that must be addressed urgently, because no country can be great without fair and honest elections. You must trust your country, because if there is no trust, there can be no greatness. And it’s very simple: no trust, no greatness. For many years I’ve called for bold, swift, and decisive action to protect the integrity of American elections.
Every American deserves to know that when they cast their vote, that vote will be counted accurately in a system that is secure. A system where cheating and interference are not only difficult but virtually impossible. Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard.
Tonight, I announce the declassification and immediate release of critical intelligence revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. These proofs show that the electoral system we have is dangerously exposed — and truly exposed, to levels we never would have believed possible — to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference.
Equally troubling: this vital information has, for many years, been hidden and kept from you, the American people, our beautiful, great American people. But all of that changes now. The documents we publish starting tonight were assembled by the White House’s Government Transparency Working Group — a remarkable group of people — as well as by the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board with the support of the heads of our major intelligence agencies, all of whom have personally reviewed the conclusions we present tonight and fully confirmed their authenticity.
You can review these documents yourself at whitehouse.gov — that’s right, whitehouse.gov, go take a look. Our aim in disclosing this information is not to undermine trust in elections, but to strengthen that trust by confronting the vulnerabilities and fixing them very, very quickly — and that is what we are doing.
The documents cover five major areas of concern. First, they show that, over a multi-year span beginning with the 2020 election cycle, the People’s Republic of China conducted what is believed to be the largest electoral data breach in history, resulting in the illicit acquisition by China of 220 million American voter files.
This information includes names, addresses, telephone numbers, party preferences, and other sensitive data needed to register to vote and engage in other malicious activities, which is precisely what was happening. This loss of data represents an unprecedented nightmare for electoral security. The intelligence even indicates that China operated a data-handling unit specifically dedicated to this new project.
Exacerbating this scandal, the second set of documents we publish reveals that deep-state actors — a group of highly famous individuals in many cases — within our intelligence apparatus actively worked to suppress and downplay the extent of China’s sinister electoral meddling, concealing it from both the president and the American people, as few would have believed possible.
U.S. intelligence agencies began to become aware of the compromise of voter-registration files in 2020 when they discovered that the data of tens of millions of voters — tens of millions — in 18 states had been purchased, stolen, or hacked by China. Yet those charged with sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden.
They did not inform me, the president, nor anyone else. And to our knowledge, they did not inform Congress. In fact, all they continued to say was: “this is the most secure election in our country’s history,” a stock phrase, a cliché, disseminated widely.
The cover-up of this colossal security flaw is all the more troubling in light of further information showing that China conducted other election-related activities to undermine my first administration and our 2020 campaign.
They did not want to, they simply did not want to. They fought like devils to prevent Donald Trump from winning, and for good reason. As these documents show, a CIA report explicitly stated, and I quote: in mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party policy was to mobilize all internal and external elements opposed to the American president, in an effort to suppress the president’s votes and force his resignation or to prevent his reelection.
Isn’t that charming? Likewise, by mid-2018, China was working to influence the results of the midterm elections, then the 2020 presidential election itself. Moreover, by mid-2019, the Chinese government’s strategy against the United States centered on weakening domestic confidence in the American president.
They simply wanted to give the impression that your president wasn’t that great, when in fact your president did an excellent job. And they did everything possible to achieve that. The document continues — and this comes from the CIA — the strategy included efforts to use Chinese connections with major American corporations to persuade American business leaders to turn against the President of the United States.
The Chinese government sought to identify American journalists who had published negative articles about the president and to pay them large sums of money to write more negative pieces about him, no matter what they said. The Chinese government wanted the president of the United States to lose the next election.
And the reason they wanted me to lose is that they knew I understood their game. I imposed billions and billions of dollars in tariffs on them and I built the strongest military in the world. We have the strongest military in the world. These are exact quotes from CIA reports. The name of the person who originated the quote is under review — but it’s even worse.
Raw intelligence obtained by the FBI in 2020, but buried by corrupt bureaucrats, indicated that China’s activities included even a plan to manufacture illegal ballots in favor of Joe Biden. The documents show that during this period dozens of CIA and NSA reports on China’s election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing.
These were briefings I received almost daily; everything that mattered was left out. An e-mail among intelligence analysts admitted that they had, and I quote, “deliberately manipulated” the president’s daily briefing to conceal information about Chinese election-related activities. Another FBI official wrote that she was directing, I quote, “an underground government,” to prevent knowledge of China’s electoral interference from reaching the honorable press.
Other whistleblowers who witnessed such conduct perceived their motivation as explicitly political. Recently, we uncovered a large number of “burn bags” — bags used to destroy information — that had been left by President Barack Hussein Obama to be burned; they were supposed to be burned.
These bags were to be treated at a higher level, by other people, incinerated and checked, but that never happened. Perhaps we were lucky. We think this was not done deliberately, but rather through the gross incompetence of the people who were supposed to burn the bags. But the findings are staggering. Tonight, I urge the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA to investigate how such crucial information was concealed and why this concealment occurred, to dismiss those involved, and to pursue criminal charges, where appropriate, against these individuals.
Yet hiding China’s interference was only the beginning. The third set of documents we publish proves that for many years we were brazenly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot-counting systems — dishonest, nearly all of them. They are vulnerable, they are easily compromised, and people within our government knew it.
This evening, we publish a series of assessments from the American intelligence community and other previously classified reports proving that our government has known for a long time that these machines are extremely exposed to attack. As one of these assessments notes: we estimate that America’s adversaries, including at a minimum Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state actors, have the capability to compromise American election infrastructure.
End of quote — but what a bold statement, is it not, coming from supposed great patriots in our country. The document further indicates, I quote, that centralized data repositories related to elections, such as voter registration databases, electoral rolls, and other official election-related websites, are the most vulnerable to exploitation, and that adversaries could use access to these systems to disrupt the electoral processes in the United States.
Tonight, we publish the full set of these conclusions, spanning from January 2020 to June 2026. It is a cyber threat aimed at the very heart of our democracy. Many people have wondered whether it is actually possible to manipulate vote totals electronically or to alter election results on these terrible machines.
Today, we publish documents showing that the CIA obtained information about a specific plot to massively rig the results in favor of Maduro’s corrupt regime in Venezuela — and that is exactly what happened: they conspired to digitally rig their own country’s 2020 elections. And that is what they did. These findings included precise details about the methods developed by the regime to alter vote totals electronically in an undetectable way, even with an audit, no matter how thorough.
These intelligence findings explain why we must act urgently to ensure that our own system can never, under any circumstances, be hacked or compromised as it has been in the past. The fourth set of documents reveals that even when meaningful evidence of fraud was detected, it was buried and hidden. Among tonight’s revelations are FBI files detailing evidence of fraud tied to a large-scale voter registration operation in Michigan.
In 2020, Michigan’s state police raided a Democratic get-out-the-vote organization — a corrupt outfit — in Muskegon, and they were so concerned by what they found that they contacted the FBI in Detroit. The documents indicate that some canvassers admitted to FBI agents that they had signed voter registration forms on behalf of others, submitted fraudulent registrations for people who did not exist, and received gift cards tied to the number of registrations they produced.
In other words: pay, play, and cheat. FBI agents working on the case believed crimes had been committed, and yet the Biden Justice Department dragged its feet on the investigation and buried it. Tonight, I call on the FBI Director to ensure the case receives a full investigation and to work with the Department of Justice to prosecute those responsible for any crime.
Finally, to illustrate the extent to which our elections remain vulnerable, we publish the results of a startling Department of Homeland Security examination. According to this DHS review of state voter rolls and public registries, approximately 278,000 non-citizens were identified as registered to vote in federal elections.
As Democratic states refuse to share their voter files, the real figure is probably much higher. Even so, this limited analysis revealed more than a quarter of a million non-citizens unlawfully appearing on voter rolls. Taken together, these revelations expose a voting system so defective and so vulnerable that no one can defend it. It is indefensible.
Hundreds of millions of American voter files are in the hands of foreign governments. Our machines and ballot-counting systems are exposed to hacking, manipulation, and corruption. China and other countries have tried to meddle in our elections. Evidence of fraud has been buried. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and deceased individuals appear, with active status, on the voter rolls.
And yet we continue to run elections without photo ID to vote, without proof of citizenship, and with tens of millions of ballots floating aimlessly through the mail. For example, the recent mayoral and gubernatorial election in California, held on June 2 — a long time ago — did not conclude until recently, on July 10. Think about it: more than a month.
It took a month to count the votes. I wonder what they were up to. It’s worse than any third-world country. No third-world country conducts elections like ours. A rare moment: NBC and ABC, the fake news outlets, both announced they would not cover this speech. They knew what it was about — because they don’t like the subject, because they know how corrupt our system is and they do not want to reveal it. They and others in the media are part of a conspiracy.
They want this fraud to continue, for one reason or another. They want to keep it going. They want to protect the radical left. We cannot have a great country — and it’s true: we cannot have a great country without free and fair elections. Fraud of this magnitude should result in the revocation of their licenses. They use our airwaves, worth billions of dollars, without paying a cent.
They pay nothing. All we want is honesty in our elections and honesty in information. They pay nothing for assets worth billions of dollars. A great wrong has been done to our nation. Our elections have been left vulnerable to rigging and theft, and the trust of the American people has been lost. This cannot be tolerated any longer.
Every American, whether Republican, Democrat, independent, or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the safest, most honest, and fairest electoral system in the world. Safe elections should be a partisan issue — really, we should all be together, Democrats, Republicans, independents, everyone, and this should not be a partisan issue.
This should be a cause that unites us, not divides us. It should be a cause — we should be united, not divided. In light of all-new and irrefutable information I revealed tonight, my administration is notifying states whose electoral data were compromised by the People’s Republic of China and others.
We will work closely to mitigate harm, and we will move swiftly to ensure that voters’ sensitive data is better protected, so that we can never be bought, never be hacked, and that we will no longer witness a stolen election. Tomorrow, the Secretary of Homeland Security will hold a briefing to present the department’s recent work confirming cyber vulnerabilities in our electronic voting systems.
They are serious. We are informing governors, senators, and members of Congress of potential problems in their states. If you look at voting today, it is in such poor shape across so many states, and we are committed to fixing it; we are also committed to working with these states and local communities to help them correct and patch known technical vulnerabilities before the midterm elections.
We have very important elections coming up. We want these elections to be honest. I have also ordered the DHS to notify every state about the presence of non-citizens on its voter rolls and to urge them to immediately remove all ineligible voters from those lists. But above all, addressing this electoral-safety crisis requires Congress to pass the SAVE America Act.
As easy as it sounds, unless you want to cheat. The only reason not to do it is that you want to cheat, because your policies are so bad and your candidates so pathetic that you cannot win otherwise. This historic law requires all voters to present a photo ID. How simple, right?
May I please have your photo? A photo ID to vote. All voters must provide proof of citizenship. Are you a citizen of our country, please? And, hopefully, there will be no more corrupted mail-in ballots — which, if you’ve looked at California and many other places, are inherently corrupted. So, no more mail-in voting, except in cases of illness, disability, military deployment, or travel for business or vacation.
These reforms are urgently needed to address the vulnerabilities I’ve mentioned. To all Americans: I urge you to pick up your phones tomorrow, call your representatives in the House and Senate, and demand that they pass the SAVE America Act without delay. Together we will restore faith and trust in our country, and we will be bigger, better, and stronger than ever.
Thank you. God bless you. God bless our great military. And God bless America. Thank you very much.