Will Trump's primetime speech help him challenge the midterm elections?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30No bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. With the new Schwab Teen Investor Account, teens can gain hands-on investing experience and build positive money habits. It's an account co-owned by you and your teen, so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com. Donald Trump has delivered a primetime speech from the White House addressing the nation and telling them he thinks American elections are not safe.

1:10Newly declassified intelligence, he said, would show meddling elections past and the danger of elections in the future. 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. Why is Donald Trump warning America now that he thinks there's a danger of cheating and meddling in American elections? What's in it for him? And could it have something to do with the upcoming midterm elections? That's what we're going to dive into.

1:49Welcome to AmeriCast.

1:53americast americast from bbc news you hear that sound oh i think when i hear that sound it reminds me of money we didn't start this war but under president trump we are finishing it this is a big cover-up and this administration is engaged in it this guy has trump arrangement syndrome i have four words for you turn the volume up

2:20Hello, it's Sarah. I'm at home in Georgetown in Washington because it's just after 10 o 'clock in the evening on Thursday night here. And it's Anthony. I am also at home here in Arlington, Virginia. Sarah, we were just together earlier tonight over cocktails, but now we're back to work and talking about Donald Trump's speech. Yeah, because we both had to come home and watch Donald Trump giving an address to the nation that was, well, it was carried live on some television channels, not all of them, but he had billed this as a really important, primetime speech where he was going to tell the nation about the ways in which American elections were being interfered with.

2:59There was some cynicism, I might say, Anthony, around Washington about whether or not he was going to produce any evidence or what kind of bombshell he would deliver. And he fell a wee bit short, I think, don't you? Yeah, big, big news is the way he had touted it. And he did question the security of American elections. He made some allegations against China, accusing them of meddling in the 2018 midterms of the 2020 presidential election, saying they acquired voter data information. But he didn't present any evidence that ballots were tampered or that the results of the 2020 election or any elections had been influenced, had been affected directly by China or any other country.

3:46So some of this was familiar, some of it was new, and we'll have to unpick a lot of the details of what he is providing. He says he's released these classified documents, but the top line is a lot of allegations, but not a lot of substance behind them. Yeah, let's have a listen to some of the allegations that he was coming up with so that people can judge for themselves what he had to say. Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S.

4:29voter files. CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, In mid-2018, the Chinese Communist Party's policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the U.S. president in an effort to reduce the U.S. president's votes and make him resign or prevent his re-election. The third set of documents we are releasing proves that for many years, Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems, dishonest almost all. They're vulnerable and they're easily compromised. And people within our government knew that.

5:17According to the DHS review, state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278 ,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote in federal elections. Since Democrat states refuse to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher than that. 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.

6:08All right, Sarah, I think the first thing we need to say is that this is rare. A president addressing the nation in prime time, nine o 'clock East Coast time, six o 'clock out in California. This is a tool that presidents have that they don't use that often because of the power of it. speaking directly to Americans after they've come home from work. It's used to talk about issues of war and economic crises. Joe Biden came on after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Donald Trump has used it to talk about the start of the Iran military operations. This is not one of those. This was a different sort of speech.

6:52Yeah, but he wanted people to think that it was of a similar importance, didn't he? He wanted people to think that this was a national security threat and that he was outlining the ways in which other countries had already tried to meddle in American elections and the threat that they might try to do so again. He wanted people to think that this was as important as taking the nation to war or something like that, because it's in his interest, and we'll explain some of this as we go through why, he thinks it's so important, basically, to try and persuade the American people that the 2020 election was not valid and potentially elections going forward might also not be entirely valid.

7:31Yeah, you know, it's a feeling at the end of this, after I listened to it, that this was almost a pitch, again, for a specific solution that he's advancing. And that's what's called the SAVE Act. It's a voter election integrity legislation that Republicans have been pushing that has been stalled in the U.S. Senate now for months. It pretty much does away with mail balloting. It requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. It requires voter identification to cast ballots. That has been stuck in the Senate. It doesn't have much hopes of passing the Senate. Democrats are blocking it. They'd have to change Senate procedures in order for it to get through.

8:12So this almost felt like a last ditch effort to try to change the trajectory of that, to drum up momentum, to increase the pressure on the U.S. Congress. And he actually went out and said, you know, call your members of Congress and urge them to pass this act. It didn't feel like anything bigger than that, which I think coming into this, the feeling was, well, maybe this would be some sort of big news that he would have some sort of bigger ask than just pass this thing. that I've been telling in the past now for months. Yeah, but what he has done is declassify information and some investigations by the CIA, made them available on the White House website so that people can look at them.

8:53And there will be many people diving deep into these documents, which he say not only reveal foreign interference in American elections, but also a deep state conspiracy to cover that up. And we should go through that, Anthony, shouldn't we? Step by step to see what it is that he's alleging and whether or not there really is any evidence for that. Because although, as you say, he's using it as a pitch to try and pass the SAVE Act, which would influence elections going forward, he hasn't given up on the idea that the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, was somehow rigged and somehow stolen from him.

9:28And he started by focusing on China, didn't he, Anthony, and saying that they had been able to access millions of files of voter data. that he was able to get the names, addresses, social security numbers, all of that kind of thing of American voters, basically all the information that you would need to register to vote. And he said that he was presenting evidence of that. That is not in and of itself evidence that anybody did falsely register to vote or that anybody manipulated the election in any way. Right. And it's not great. I think the idea of foreign governments having all this information about Americans in their hands is concerning.

10:08I mean, some voter information files are publicly available. Some are actually available to purchase. And one of the things Donald Trump said was China purchased some of them. Now, they're not supposed to be sold to foreign governments, but maybe they found some way of getting their hands on them. He did provide a number 220 million files of voters that China has acquired. But he did not present any evidence, as you say, about what they did with that information. They could have used it to gather data on Americans to get an idea of what the American electorate looks like or the demographics. The same sort of thing that people who analyze elections use this information for.

10:50But you're right. That was a big thing. The first big thing was to say China got their hands on all of this information and then to imply that they did so for nefarious purposes. And I was listening to that firstly thinking, OK, you're telling us they've got this information, but you're not giving us any evidence that they used it in any way. But I was also at the same time thinking to myself, if China did have the ability to influence the outcome of the 2020 election, would they necessarily want Donald Trump out of office? Would they necessarily want to replace him with Joe Biden? I mean, all of the investigation into the 2016 election was around the fact that Russia and other of America's enemies would rather a chaotic president in the White House, somebody like Donald Trump, who they think is destabilizing the Western world, rather than a kind of, you know, old foreign policy hand like Joe Biden.

11:37Right. And he alleged that China, Trump alleged that China was also pressuring business leaders to try to convince people that Trump was not a great president, was also trying to use social media to influence the election. Again, things that Russia definitely tried to do in 2016, that the Mueller report, a joint bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee review, found Russian efforts not just to use social media to influence elections, but also trying to gain access to voter data, to actually gain access to voting systems, although they did not, to hack members of the Democratic Party, including senior people in Hillary Clinton's campaign, which they then leaked to cause damage to Hillary Clinton.

12:21Clinton and actually even funding on the ground electioneering rallies Russian government funded in various parts of the country in order to sow chaos and disorder. So yes, what China did and what he has alleged, there is evidence of that. It has been evidence that we've seen in the past, but China is not the only country, but Trump seemed to be very focused on China here because in his view, China was trying to undermine him in particular and by as a result to boost Joe Biden. And of course, the idea that China or anybody else who sees itself as an adversary to America would be trying to influence business leaders, use social media, any of the things he was talking about.

13:07I mean, that's kind of all fair, isn't it? In international relations, you know, you want to destabilize your enemies. That's not evidence that something went wrong with the election. That's just evidence of the fact that your enemies will work against you. And that's inevitable. Yeah, I mean, the United States has done its share of attempts to influence foreign governments and exerts pressure abroad. And certainly, you know, we'd say it's only for the best of reasons. But we are well aware that there are other countries that would love to see, you know, Americans lose trust in their institutions, lose trust in democracy.

13:42And we should be aware of that. Now, Trump said that there is evidence that the infrastructure of American elections is susceptible to attack, that cyber fraud can be used to not only gain these voter data information, but also to disrupt voter files, the logbooks that polling places use to see who is registered voters. These are also concerns that Americans and the American government has known about for quite some time after 2016. And that evidence of Russian attempts to disrupt the elections, there were funding, there were steps taken to try to address some of these shortcomings. And they definitely have not been solved.

14:28In fact, some of the things Donald Trump has done recently is cut funding for some of the same election security organizations and apparatus that were instituted after 2016. But it is something that Americans should be worried about, should be worried about the infrastructure of their elections and ensuring that it is safe from foreign attack. And he also targeted voting machines. And this is really interesting because it's something that Donald Trump and his allies have talked a lot about in the 2020 election, where they alleged that voting machines were manipulated. And there are people who genuinely believe that if they press the button or pull the lever for Trump, it somehow within the machine got turned into a vote for Biden.

15:12And that's what was counted. But before we go into whether or not they were ever accessed, Anthony, could you explain to us how these voting machines work? because you may or may not know, it's not something I'm accustomed to in any way. If you vote in the United Kingdom, you walk into the polling station and you use a pen to tick a box or put a cross in a box for the person that you're voting for. The whole idea of using a machine to do it is a little bit alien to a lot of us. Yeah, and the one thing you need to know is that it's different from state to state. They have different systems, different machines.

15:44It's one of the reasons why we found that the American system of conducting elections is difficult to hack is because you can't just hack one system. You'd have to have all of these different systems, all of these different states. But for instance, here in Virginia, when I go to vote, it is a paper ballot that I fill out with little circles on a piece of paper. But then I take it to a scanatron and I put it in the scanatron and it runs through and it will tell me whether it was accepted or not. And then I go over and I confirm with the people that I that I voted in other places. There are touchscreens that you can touch on and that will give you a printout that you can you can run over and turn in.

16:27A lot of it has changed since 2000 when those elections that were disputed between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Oh, the infamous hanging chads, yes. Butterfly ballads, you'd have to punch through on the chads. And it was clear at that point that a lot of the systems were just antiquated and unreliable. You could tell whether a vote had been cast or not, whether it had been pushed all the way through. A lot of that has changed. But the systems generally now will provide some sort of paper record, which is why you've seen these audits that were conducted in places like Arizona and Georgia after Donald Trump's allegations of voting fraud in 2020.

17:08They were able to sit down and hand recount these paper ballots. They may have been tabulated by machines, but there was a record that they could count. But if you talk to someone in New York or talk to someone who votes by mail in California or talk to someone who votes in a polling place in Florida, everyone's experience is going to be a little bit different. And Donald Trump was saying tonight, basically, that these voting machines could be accessed by Russia, China, North Korea, even Iran, I think he was suggesting. This has been discussed a lot ever since the 2020 election. And in fact, there have been court cases.

17:48The Dominion voting systems took a case against Fox News, didn't they? because Fox News had accused them of their voting machines of having been inaccurate. And actually, Fox News ended up paying millions of dollars to Dominion voting. Now, there's other companies involved in this as well. From what I could hear of what Donald Trump was saying, I'd be really interested, Anthony, if you heard the same thing, that he was essentially saying, it's possible these countries could access the voting machines, but yet again, he didn't have any evidence that it had actually happened. Right. He alleged that this election system is broken and vulnerable.

18:27No one can defend it. But he didn't really say why. He said that there was corruption in these elections because it was taking too long to count the ballots in California. California, it was actually interesting. He was talking about voting fraud and evidence, concrete evidence of voting fraud. But the place he was talking about that voting fraud was in Venezuela. He said that the United States government had compelling, concrete evidence that there were attempts to change millions of votes in Venezuela. And he said, if it could happen, essentially implied that if it could happen in Venezuela, then it's certainly possible that it could happen here.

19:08But it's a different sort of system in Venezuela. And the security that they have here in the United States is definitely very different than Venezuela. One of the things to keep in mind, Sarah, too, is that voting machines are not connected to the internet. In this country, they are not something that you could buy remotely, hack into. Now, in theory, if you had access to the voting polling places or the place where the votes are counted, you could do some sort of hacking. But that would require more than just some clever person with an internet password connecting from China. Yeah. And in fact, even on that Venezuela election, where Donald Trump did seem to be suggesting that there was more evidence gathered by the CIA of interference with the voting machines there.

19:52If you look at what the CIA had said, was that they said they thought the government may have the capability to do that, but no evidence that it had actually happened again. So we're still in the same realm of maybe bad actors might have access to doing something, but even Trump himself is not presenting any evidence that it actually, in fact, happened. And then moving on to things that might affect the midterm elections, and one has to assume a lot of this is to do with the midterm elections. He did have some numbers, some new figures about how many non-citizens in America, he says, are registered to vote, which does seem a little bit bizarre, the idea that somebody who either doesn't have the legal right to be in America, or I guess somebody like me, I mean, I'm legally allowed to be in America and I'm legally allowed to work, but I'm not allowed to vote in your elections because I'm not a citizen.

20:49Now, to the best of my knowledge, I'm not on a voter roll, but it would be a fairly big deal, I guess, if there were huge numbers of non-citizens on the voter rolls. I mean, that would raise the specter that some of those people did vote. And now there have been investigations and there have been very few instances of people who were registered to vote improperly actually did cast ballots. But he came up with a number. He said 278 ,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in federal elections. One of the things about registering to vote is you can do it at a polling place. You can do it at a county office.

21:27You can do it at the DMV when you're getting your driver's license. And if you check the wrong box, in theory, you, Sarah, could get registered to vote. But it wouldn't be a federal crime unless you went and cast a ballot knowing that you're not a legal citizen and cast that ballot in an election. But there's a potential for that. One thing you have to remember is that there are 170 million registered voters in the United States, 278 ,000. if that is an accurate figure, is a fraction of 1%. And there have been studies of some of the data that the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, has been relying on to come up with these numbers for undocumented registered voters, and has been found to overcount that number in the past.

22:15There was a study of some Texas data where local precincts or local counties were presented with undocumented voters and they went and looked and actually they were voters who became citizens and it just wasn't updated in the files that Homeland Security were using. It was someone with a similar name. So we'd have to look more into where these numbers are coming from, from the administration before we can definitively say that that is accurate. But even if there were just over a quarter of a million non-citizens registered to vote, and even if they all did cast a ballot, that's barely enough to affect the outcome of a presidential vote in one state, isn't it, let alone across the whole country?

22:56Right, exactly. And then so that is, I don't think anyone asserts that there is no fraud, that fraudulent ballots haven't been cast. But to do so in the big enough sorts of numbers, to do so without being caught all in one direction or the other, I think that is the bar that we haven't seen any evidence of being reached in any presidential election. I mean, there are allegations, there's been evidence, there've been convictions of voting fraud in places like North Carolina and congressional elections. And there have been some instances of people who cast illegal ballots who have been caught in places like Texas and California, and they have been prosecuted.

23:39But there's been a lot of eyeballs looking for more evidence of that. And the fact that we've only been able to find a handful here and a handful there, I think that suggests that the system, at least as far as we can tell, is working mostly the way it's designed. I assume that Donald Trump is bringing this up, even though the numbers aren't huge, because it's part of a wider story that he's been telling, both about elections and about immigration, where you hear him and his supporters repeating the idea that lots and lots of non-citizens are in America casting ballots for Democrats and a conspiracy theory that one of the reasons that the Biden administration allowed so many people to come into America and had such very weak border security during the four years that Biden was in office was deliberately to bring lots and lots of immigrants into America, allow them to register to vote and have them all vote Democrat to make sure that no Republican could ever be elected again.

24:35Now, that sounds wild and crazy, but it's something I hear a lot from people who genuinely believe it, that this is the reason why Democrats, as they perceive it, have been more lax about immigration, and that it's a big conspiracy, basically, to alter the electorate of America and create an inbuilt Democrat majority. So when Donald Trump's pushing stories like this, it's presumably to feed some of that and to get to this SAVE Act that we were talking about earlier and try and persuade Congress to vote to make people have to prove their citizenship before they can register to vote. Right. And that is the flip side of this that Donald Trump will say.

25:15If you pass the SAVE Act, then Republicans will win elections for the next 50 years. The only reason why a Republican loses an election is because of voting fraud, because of all these ballots being cast illegally. And if If all you do is require proof of citizenship, showing, I suppose, a birth certificate or a passport when you're registering to vote, and then if your name does not currently match your birth certificate, then showing your marriage license or some sort of legal name change in order to get that voter registration. If you have those sorts of bars, then only legal people will be voting.

25:52And if only legal people are voting, then Republicans will win in the landslide. Obviously, that requires some pretty significant leaps of faith when you look at public opinion polling and the way elections have been conducted for generations and the fact that Republicans win sometimes, they lose sometimes, the electorate is fickle and voting fraud does not play any kind of a significant role in that. And I do wonder if Donald Trump is worried about the midterm elections, why he's still going on about the 2020 vote? Because, I mean, there are some of his supporters who believe that that election was stolen from him.

26:29But I think even them are beginning to think it's ancient history. And it's not going to persuade people to back Republican candidates in November if he keeps harping on about this when they're more worried about the economy, the price of gas and what looks like might be turning into a forever war in Iran. But he still seems to be obsessed by the 2020 election and by surrounding himself with people whom he basically forces to say that they, too, believe the 2020 election was stolen. I personally don't think that half of the folk around him actually believe that. They just know that in order to keep their jobs in Donald Trump's cabinet or in the White House, they have to say to him, oh, yes, sir, of course you were robbed in 2020.