Trump-China latest: President touts ‘great reviews’ on speech spreading baseless election fraud claims

Democrats criticized DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin after he announced certain “mandatory” election changes.

“We are going to make our security enhancements mandatory,” Mullin told reporters Friday, adding that states are going to “have to implement security issues.”

“We’re saying that the machines have to be secured and that your voter registration list needs to be scrubbed,” he said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, considered a potential 2028 contender, shot back on X, writing: “California has free, fair, and secure elections and we will fight for them.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote: “They are losing, and they know it. Election officials will not be intimidated. Senate Democrats will make sure resources are in place to fight back against any illegal activity by the Trump administration.”

Multiple government reviews have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare and that foreign adversaries did not alter votes in the 2020 election.

Following President Trump’s speech on election security Thursday night, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin escalated the administration’s rhetoric, asserting that foreign adversaries could hack voting machines and warning that state officials who refuse to comply with federal security directives could face unspecified consequences.

In his primetime address, Trump described voting machines as “easily compromised.” Speaking to reporters Friday, Mullin went further, suggesting that hackers could infiltrate systems and manually alter vote totals—an allegation that runs counter to intelligence community findings that no such activity occurred.

“We’re saying that the machines had to be secured and that your voter restoration list needs to be scrubbed,” he told reporters while discussing his plan to aggressively pursue voter fraud, which reviews have found to be exceedingly rare.

“I will tell you if the states choose not to participate — we will make sure that we make those states a priority to look at who voted in their states and hold the election officials accountable,” he added.

Donald Trump has spent more than a decade spreading false and inflated claims about election outcomes and how the nation’s elections are run. His primetime address on Thursday was no exception.

The president alleged “shocking vulnerabilities in election infrastructure” and claimed our “election system” is “dangerously” exposed to “hacking, exploitation and foreign interference.”

But it appears much of the newly declassified material he announced Thursday evening echoes or reinterprets previously disclosed information that was already known to intelligence officials, including during his first administration.

Importantly, nothing in the materials supports any allegations that any votes were manipulated by fraud or foreign actors to have changed election outcomes.

Election officials and voting rights advocates fear the president’s remarks, which he says are meant to protect elections, will instead continue to sow deep distrust in their legitimacy to serve his own interests.

Alex Woodward takes a closer look.

Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin had this to say on MS NOW’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell last night.

The White House released a series of documents Thursday evening promoting the president’s assertion that U.S. elections are vulnerable to manipulation, although at least one contains information the president has previously denied.

Among the trove of election integrity documents, released in tandem with the president’s speech, one National Intelligence Council assessment on “Foreign Threats to the 2020 Election” determined that Russian government-linked actors were trying to boost Trump’s campaign.

The document insinuates that Russia seemingly preferred Trump and wanted to boost his campaign on social media while disparaging former president Joe Biden’s then-presidential campaign.

However, when that information was initially released in 2020, Trump brushed it off as a “hoax” and accused Democrats of spreading misinformation that Russia preferred him as a candidate.

Here’s more from Ariana Baio.

If you missed the president’s remarks last night or are just joining, here are Andrew Feinberg and John Bowden with a full report on the allegations he had to make about alleged foreign interference in recent American elections and the role Washington’s “deep state” may have played in concealing the truth.

California Sen. Adam Schiff offers this breakdown of the president’s speech last night and what he considers to be its true purpose:

The president’s latest attack on Beijing and the U.S. ‘deep state’ is a sign that he’s planning to prepare for the worst in America’s November elections, writes our world affairs editor Sam Kiley.

The former Georgia Republican representative continues to be a thorn in Trump’s side, calling his big speech: “Just a big shiny object for MAGA to distract them away from the Iran War, Epstein files, and massive failure to deliver campaign promises.”

She also argues that the foreign power currently seeking to influence American politics is Israel.