RealClearPolitics has posted the text and video of President Trump’s prime time speech last night. The White House has posted the Election Integrity documents cited in the speech. They can be downloaded at the linked page.
Looking for an accessible summary with some analysis of the speech, I found Politico’s story to be of use. John previewed Trump’s speech and anticipated that Trump would focus on election security with a look back to 2020. That’s more or less — I would say less — what Trump did. The speech emphasized capabilities — the harm that could be done by China with information it has gathered — rather than harm that was in fact done. Thus he asserted:
As one assessment states, quote, “We judge that United States adversaries, including, at a minimum, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state groups, have the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure.”
That is some statement, made by supposedly great patriots of our country.
Allegations of harm done — something achieved with information gathered or vulnerabilities exploited in fact — appeared to me few and far between. This seems like thin stuff to me:
One email among intelligence analysts admitted that they had, quote, “deliberately massaged the Presidential Daily Briefing to withhold information regarding Chinese activities related to the election.”
It may be “a conspiracy so immense,” but what happened?
Trump also discussed illegal aliens registered to vote:
According to the DHS review of state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 noncitizens who are registered to vote in federal elections. Since Democrat states refused to share their voter files, the real number is actually much higher than that. Yet even this limited analysis found more than one-quarter of a million foreigners illegally registered to vote.
Democrats protect illegal aliens as critical component of their constituency. That is a problem. Trump sums it up:
Put together, these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible.
As I say above, however, I would say the speech makes out little harm actually done to date. Watching Sean Hannity’s commentary on the speech on Fox News, I thought it was almost hilariously cautious about the implications regarding voting machines. Once burned, twice shy.
I thought Trump would take the opportunity to say something about our efforts to throttle Iran or something to address the economic concerns on the minds of voters. That proved not to be the case. The mention of Iran in passing in the first quote above was it.
The speech appears simply to have constituted a last-ditch attempt to promote the SAVE Act. Whatever the merits of the proposed law, the speech made a thin case that will leave the SAVE Act exactly where it is.
