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One of the most eye-raising claims by Trump tonight was that he wasn't trying to make American citizens believe their elections are compromised. 

"Our purpose in disclosing this information is not to weaken confidence in elections, but to earn that confidence by confronting vulnerabilities and correcting them very, very quickly," he said early in the speech. 

Yet he went on to reveal a litany of claims about the failures of the U.S. Elections system: evidence of a massive data breach; cyber vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems; Chinese plots against him ahead of the 2020 election; and a quarter of a million non-citizens registered to vote. 

He then wrapped up his speech by disparaging U.S. Elections from the local to national level. 

"Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen," Trump said. 

"If you look at voting today, it's in such bad shape in so many states," he added.

"There's no third-world country that has elections like we have," he continued. 

It's difficult to see how Trump could have done more in a 27-minute address to weaken confidence in U.S. Elections. 

The vice-chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence blasted Trump's speech in a statement.

"Tonight, Americans heard the president once again repeat claims about our elections that have been investigated for years and repeatedly rejected by the Intelligence Community, the FBI, DHS, DOJ, bipartisan state election officials, audits, recounts, and the courts," said U.S. Senator Mark R. Warner, a Virginia Democrat. "The facts have not changed."

Warner said the intelligence community's conclusions about election fraud allegations "have been remarkably consistent across Republican and Democratic administrations" in concluding there was no information suggesting China tried to interfere with election processes. 

But Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican, backed Trump in a post on X, repeating one of the president's claims about non-citizens registered to vote in federal elections.

"Congress must pass the SAVE America Act to ensure that only American citizens vote in American elections," he wrote.

"If we don’t have secure elections, we have no country." 

Three major U.S. Networks declined to break into their regular programming to carry Trump's address live and in full.

ABC, NBC and CNN each said they would stream the address on their online platforms but would not air Trump's full remarks across their TV networks. 

"We are not going to take the president's speech live," a CNN anchor told viewers around an hour before the address. "That's because of this president's history of misleading and in some cases false statements on the subject of elections and election integrity." 

U.S. Networks have throughout Trump's time in office struggled to decide whether to air his speeches live — because he's the president and his statements are newsworthy — while facing the challenge of fact-checking his exaggerations and falsehoods.

During tonight's speech, ‌Trump said networks that did not air his speech were engaged in a "plot" and should have their licences revoked.

The ABC and NBC streaming channels generally draw a fraction of the viewers that their ​traditional broadcast signals reach. CNN's digital network is a paid-for service with a smaller audience than its regular cable channel.

Political consultants break down Trump's speech

Ally Sammarco, a Democratic consultant and former Republican strategist in Washington, called the president's claims "laughable."

"If everything he said was true in the 2020 election, why wouldn't it be also true in the 2024 election and midterms between then?" she said. 

"It's quite embarrassing at this point. We all just need to move on from it." 

Laura Fink, a Democratic strategist in San Diego, said the speech was a "greatest hits" of Trump grievances. 

"It's part and parcel of an agenda that is not the American people's agenda, not even a Republican agenda, to work on these baseless accusations of interference in election outcomes," she said. 

"I think that a lot of people in the Republican party are shaking their heads and wondering what he's doing."

Caroline Heldman, a political scientist at Occidental College, said the speech didn't contain "anything new" other than more unsubstantiated claims. 

She said she thinks the speech was targeted at Senate Republicans in an effort to pressure them to pass the SAVE America Act, something they're hesitant to do.

"The reason that they're not moving on this is it's not entirely clear it's going to benefit them. In fact, it might harm them," she said. 

That's because there are more rural voters on the Republican side who would be affected by the bill if it gets rid of mail-in voting, she said. "So if he gets rid of mail-in ballots, that means that he is actually disadvantaging his political party, which is why Senate Republicans won't pass this."

David Michael Lamb

Trump said the documents he was declassifying reveal "shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure."

But that appears not to be the case. 

When it comes to the voter registration data that Trump said China stole, it has been widely pointed out that the data is publicly available and is routinely used by candidates, political consultants and others.

Another document, prepared by the CIA last month, concerned Venezuela's election, not America's.

Yet another CIA document detailed efforts by Chinese spies to target Joe Biden's campaign, not Trump's, and noted that Beijing "does not currently intend to covertly interfere to try to sway the outcome of the election," although it said China might later decide to do so.

I've looked at some of the trove of files posted on the White House website that Trump said provides the evidence to back up his claims. 

The file on Chinese interference in the 2020 election includes a lot of heavily redacted emails, some of which appear to be between members of the intelligence community. 

"We assess that Beijing has taken some low-level, exploratory steps to denigrate the President and shape voter perceptions ahead of the election," says one, dated Oct. 5, 2020, with sender and recipient information blocked out. 

This appears to be part of what Trump described in his address as proof of a Chinese strategy "focused on undermining domestic confidence in the U.S. President" ahead of the 2020 election.

David Michael Lamb

The truth behind Trump’s push to ban mail-in voting | About That

President Donald Trump wants to do away with mail-in voting, claiming it's responsible for 'massive voter fraud' in the U.S. Andrew Chang explores what might really be behind Trump's contempt for mail-in ballots and what he can actually do about it. Images provided by Getty Images, The canadian river press out and Reuters.

In unity of his claims this evening, ruff said mail-in ballots are "inherently corrupt" and pledged to put an end to the practice except in cases of illness, disability, military deployments or travel. He described mail-in ballots as a "vulnerability" that must be stopped.

In March, Trump himself used a mail-in ballot to vote in a Florida special election — just days after he again claimed that using such a ballot constitutes cheating.

In April, Trump issued an executive order that attempted to crack down on mail-in voting by demanding the postal service refuse to deliver ballots to anyone not on newly created federal mail voter lists.

Trump, however, has never put forward any evidence that mail-in voting constitutes cheating or compromises elections.

It's impossible to know this quickly how accurate Trump's allegations are. 

The most shocking, if true, alleges that China attempted to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, hacking into U.S. Voter files, and that members of the intelligence community covered it up. 

He claimed that China acquired 220 million U.S. Voter files, including names, addresses, phone numbers and political party preferences. 

"Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China's election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing," he said. 

Trump called his claims "irrefutable" and promised to release the previously classified intelligence files that back it up. It remains to be seen whether the evidence actually does so.

Trump wraps up his speech by talking up his "SAVE America Act" — it stands for "safeguard American voter eligibility" — calling it a landmark bill that Congress must pass "without delay" to restore faith in the American electoral system. 

The controversial bill would majorly overhaul federal elections in the U.S., requiring voters nationwide to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote, and provide photo ID at the polls. 

Tomorrow, Trump says the secretary of homeland security will be holding a briefing to outline the department's recent work that he says confirms "cyber vulnerabilities" in U.S. Electronic voting systems. 

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