On July 16, 2026, Donald Trump delivered a prime time televised election integrity address.

Read a transcript of the address here.

During the address Trump announced the "immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence" in the form of documents that are available to view and download on the whitehouse.gov website here. The documents consist of the following four groups:

• Vulnerabilities in Electronic Voting and Ballot-Counting Systems
• China's Acquisition and Exploitation of American Voter Data
• Michigan Voter-Registration Investigation
• Noncitizens on State Voter Rolls

Here's a list of claims Trump made during the address:

1. The immediate declassification and release of critical intelligence reveals "shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure."
2. "They [China] fought like hell not to have it, Donald Trump to win, and for good reason."
3. China acquired 220 million US voter files which includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and political party preferences.
4. Members of the "Deep State" actively suppressed and downplayed information about the extent of China's "sinister election meddling."
5. "China was working to influence the results of the US midterm elections and later the results of the 2020 presidential election itself."
6. The Trump administration has discovered "burn bags" containing information about China's efforts to influence the 2020 election. According to Trump, the information was ordered burned by President Obama, but it wasn't.
7. "Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems."
8. A plot was successfully carried out to digitally rig the Venezuela 2020 elections in favor of then President Nicolás Maduro.
9. "Even when significant evidence of fraud has been detected, it has been buried and covered up."
10. A raid of a "Democrat Get Out the Vote Organization" carried out in 2020 by Michigan State Police uncovered evidence of voter fraud. The investigation was turned over to the FBI, the "FBI agents working on the case believe that crimes were committed, yet the Biden Department of Justice slow-walked the investigation and killed it." Trump asks the FBI director "to ensure that the matter is fully investigated."
11. A DHS review of state voter rolls and public records showed there are about 278,000 non-citizens registered to vote in federal elections, but according to Trump the real number is "much higher than that."
12. Our election system is "so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it."
13. NBC News and ABC News chose not to televise the speech because "they don't like the topic," because "they know how corrupt our system is," and because "they don't want to reveal it."
14. NBC News, ABC News, and others in the media are "part of a plot."
15. NBC News and ABC News "want to continue this fraud" in order "to protect the radical left."
16. NBC News and ABC News fraud "should mean a revocation of their licenses."

In addition, Trump said:

Hundreds of millions of US voter files are in the hands of foreign governments. Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed to hacking and manipulation and corruption. China and other countries have been trying to meddle in our elections. Evidence of fraud has been buried. Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls. And yet we still have elections with no voter ID, no proof of citizenship, and tens of millions of ballots floating aimlessly through the mail.

Every American, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, independent or otherwise, should be able to agree that we deserve the most secure, honest, and fair election system anywhere in the world. Secure elections should be a partisan — really, should just, we should be together Democrats, Republicans, independents, everybody, and it should not be a partisan issue. It should cause to unite us, not to divide us. This should be a cause, we should be united, not divided.

We will be working closely to mitigate any harm and we're taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected so we can never be bought, we can never be hacked, and we can never watch a stolen election again.

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.

And hopefully there will be no corrupt mail-in ballots, which, if you watched California and so many other places, mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt. So, you would have no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment, or travel if you're going away on business or vacation.

On July 16, 2026, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice Harmeet Dhillon announced the launch of a joint DOJ/DHS election integrity website. According to the announcement on X, the website has an "interactive map showing what actions the federal government is taking to improve election security, transparency, and integrity for all Americans! Updated regularly!" View the website here.

On July 17, 2026, the White House published a page entitled "SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT: President Trump Declassifies Intel on Foreign Election Interference and Deep State Coverup" in response to "Radical Left Democrats and their Fake News allies" who "immediately moved to discredit, downplay, and distract from the shocking disclosures."

On July 17, 2026, the White House published a page entitled "WHAT THEY ARE SAYING: President Trump Exposes Bombshell Evidence of Foreign Election Interference and Deep State Suppression" which is a long list of comments supporting Trump's speech, the vast majority of which are from conservatives and Trump's own administration.

On July 17, 2026, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin held a press conference:

Secretary Mullin stated that DHS had identified more than 250,000 potential non-citizens ​illegally registered to vote in California, New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mullin called on the secretaries of the four states to respond within two weeks and confirm they will work with DHS's "SAVE Program", to improve election security. For states who refused to comply, Mullin said those states would be made a priority to review election conduct, and face fines, penalties, and prison time for violations. He also criticized who he called "activist judges" making election security a partisan issue by limiting the department's enforcement of the SAVE program. Asked about Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents' use of force, Mullin said, "We're turning up the heat on the streets."

On July 17, 2026 the DHS published a press release entitled "DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin Sends Letters to Secretaries of State Warning About Non-Citizens on Voter Rolls" which states:

WASHINGTON – The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent letters to the secretaries of state in four states warning them about tens of thousands of non-citizens who are illegally on the states' voter rolls.

Secretary Mullin sent letters to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, New Jersey Secretary of State Dale Caldwell, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, and Pennsylvania Secretary of State Al Schmidt.

"Election security is national security," said DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. "As President Trump announced last night, DHS has identified over 250,000 potential non-citizens illegally registered to vote in just 4 U.S. states. Only Americans should be electing American leaders."

Through preliminary reviews of the four states' records, DHS found that there may be as many as:

• 190,832 non-citizens registered to vote in California.
• 35,152 non-citizens registered to vote in New Jersey.
• 15,903 non-citizens registered to vote in Nevada.
• 14,576 non-citizens registered to vote in Pennsylvania.

Secretary Mullin called on the secretaries of state to respond within two weeks and confirm their intentions to collaborate with DHS in order to ensure free, fair, and honest elections.

In recent weeks, DHS has taken additional steps to safeguard the integrity and security of American elections. These measures include:

• The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requiring grant recipients to take several key actions on election integrity.
• DHS directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to enforce stricter penalties, including deportation, for aliens who illegally vote in American elections.

On July 18, 2026, speaking with host Katie Tur on MS NOW about Trump's authority to declare a national emergency regarding elections, Hofstra University law professor James Sample said:

He can try, but legally speaking, the answer to that is absolutely not. And the reason I say that the reason is absolutely not, Katy. It actually goes to a different president, Truman, not Trump.

But 1952 Korean War, there's a threatened steel strike and Truman wants to seize the steel mills, because in the middle of wartime, losing the ability to produce steel is a very serious matter. He declares a national emergency and wants to seize the steel mills in order to put them into work. THE SUPREME COURT SAYS, IN AN OPINION THAT IT REMAINS A LANDMARK TO THIS DAY, AN OPINION BY JUSTICE ROBERT JACKSON, SETS OUT A THREE-PART TEST FOR WHAT A PRESIDENT CAN DO MERELY BY DECLARING A national emergency.

And the test is simple. It is based around the relationship between Congress and the president. Had Congress been silent on the question? Is Congress, IS CONGRESS SUPPORTIVE OF THE QUESTION OR HAS CONGRESS SPOKEN AGAINST THE ACTION THAT THE PRESIDENT WANTS TO TAKE? THE PRESIDENT HERE IS TRYING TO IN ESSENCE PASS THE SAVE AMERICA ACT WITHOUT CONGRESS. THAT PUTS THE PRESIDENT at his lowest ebb of power. He does not have the power to relocate constitutional authority that exists in the legislature.

This Congress has rejected the SAVE Act repeatedly, as we know. So that would put President Trump declaring an emergency and trying to do any of these things at his lowest level of potential power vis-a-vis declaring an emergency doesn't solve that.

When asked by Tur about what happens if Trump declares a national emergency without Congressional approval, and how the Supreme Court might then get involved, Sample says:

There are lawsuits that are being prepared for this eventuality or hypothetical eventuality. Right now, the lawsuits are already prepared and ready to go.

Sample goes on to say:

We have statutes, a national emergencies act, IEPA, which was the statute at issue in the tariff space. Think about IEPA as a perfect example.

The Supreme Court said the word tariffs isn't in the STATUTE, THE WORD TAXES IS IN THE STATUTE. YOU KNOW IT'S NOT IN ANY EMERGENCY ACT, ANY EMERGENCY STATUTE. ELECTIONS? THE WORD ELECTIONS. HE HAS NO AUTHORITY TO assert executive power over elections. And the reason here, Katie, is simple. The framers of the Constitution didn't omit that emergency power accidentally. They were very aware of what an executive who had control over elections could do.

More:

• Trump's DOJ launched a new 'election integrity' website. It's riddled with errors | Democracy Docket
• Trump rehashes claims of election vulnerabilities, foreign interference, and fraud in primetime speech | Votebeat
• Trump tries to undermine trust in elections, but documents don't support his claims | PBS
• Battleground state election officials respond to Trump's efforts to reshape voting process | PBS
• Mullin pushes states to comply with election demands, echoing Trump's claims about midterm risks | Associated Press
• DHS secretary vows fines — and even prison time — for election officials that don't comply | Politico
• DHS Secretary Mullin threatens to prosecute election chiefs who refuse voter roll demands | Democracy Docket

Commentary:

In a July 11, 2026 HWR post entitled "21st Century ROAD to Housing Act Becomes Law after Donald Trump's Refusal to Sign" I made the following comment:

Trump is signaling that he intends to declare a "national emergency" before the upcoming November midterm elections.

I also commented that he's going to use the January 28, 2026 FBI raid of the Fulton County elections office, the March 9, 2026 FBI raid and hand over of Arizona 2020 election audit records to the FBI, and the June 5, 2026 announcement of DOJ and FBI investigations into the recent 2026 California primary elections to justify the declaration.

Trump's speech, the announcement of the DOJ/DHS election integrity website, the "SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT" and "WHAT THEY ARE SAYING" pages on whitehouse.gov, and MarkWayne Mullin's press conference are a major escalation of Trump's ongoing effort to cast doubt on the integrity of the upcoming November midterm elections. It's also further indication that he will declare a "national emergency" sometime between now and the end of the year.

These efforts are an attempt by Trump and his administration to give the outward appearance of being "official" and recognized as "authoritative" when in reality they are nothing more than the continued expansion and gross exacerbation of election denial.

In an e-mail I received from Marc Elias (Democracy Docket) dated July 18, 2026, Elias said:

Donald Trump didn't reveal evidence of voter fraud on Thursday night. Instead, his speech was the culmination of a crisis he and Republicans manufactured as an excuse to take over elections.

Despite his lies, Trump does not actually want accurate voter rolls. He wants to decide which U.S. citizens can register and which cannot — who can cast a ballot and who is denied, and which elections are certified and which are rejected.

That is why he has pushed the SAVE Act, legislation that makes registering to vote much more burdensome. It is why he has falsely claimed that states are his agents for counting ballots. And it is what motivated his despicable speech.

On February 19, 2026, during a speech in Rome, Georgia, Trump said (bold added for emphasis):

Mail-in ballots are crooked as hell. We're the only country in the world that used this type of mail-in ballot, the only country in the world. I'll tell you what Republicans have to win this one. We'll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won't lose a race. We want voter ID. We want proof of citizenship.

A March 3, 2026 Center for American Progress article entitled "The Trump Administration Has No Legal Authority To Invoke National Security and Take Over Elections" cites this quote from Trump saying the following:

The fact that the president would try to unilaterally and unconstitutionally put in place policies he has explicitly stated would benefit a particular party is a clear sign to all Americans that any EO including such a policy is not about election integrity, but rather election manipulation.

That same article goes into great depth discussing the legality of declaring a national election emergency. The article notes that in February of this year, a 17-page proposed executive order entitled "ESTABLISHING SECURITY, INTEGRITY, AND TRANSPARENCY FOR UNITED STATES ELECTIONS WITH PROTECTIONS AGAINST FOREIGN INTERFERENCE" dated April 12, 2025 was uncovered.

Here's more of what the Center for American Progress article says:

Proclaiming a national emergency may be part of President Trump's longstanding argument that presidents enjoy almost unlimited powers—especially regarding national security—rooted in Article II of the Constitution, but it does not obviate clear constitutional dictates that the president has no authority to nationalize or otherwise interfere in the administration of elections. If and when the purported executive order is challenged in court, federal judges would have no choice but to quickly enjoin it.

President Trump's reported executive order would be nothing but another escalation in his anti-democratic attempts to spread disinformation about the security of American elections, deny people their right to vote, and sabotage election results to lock in his political power.

In February of this year, when asked by a reporter if he knew about the existence of the proposed executive order Trump said "Who told you that?" and "No."

Regarding Mullin's press conference, in an e-mail I received from Marc Elias (Democracy Docket) dated July 20, 2026, he points out that during the conference Mullin said:

REAL ID does not prove citizenship and does not give you the right to vote.

Why is this important?

Elias explains (bold added for emphasis):

The first part of what Mullin said is correct — REAL ID does not prove citizenship. In fact, only five states — Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington — issue Enhanced Driver's Licenses that are restricted to U.S. citizens. Driver's licenses in every other state are not proof of citizenship, whether REAL ID or not.

The result is that if a person is required to prove citizenship to register to vote or cast a ballot, a driver's license is of no use — except in those five states. Instead, a person born in the U.S. must present an unexpired passport or an original or certified copy of a birth certificate.

Only about half the population of U.S. citizens have passports. And Black Americans — the base of the Democratic Party — are far less likely than white Americans to have one.

As for birth certificates, most Americans don't regularly carry them. For many, the document is stored away somewhere or lost. And for people born outside a hospital setting — especially older Black Americans — they may never have received a standard birth certificate at all.

By far, however, the biggest impact of a citizenship-proof requirement would fall on women who changed their last names when they married. For them, a birth certificate alone doesn't work, since the surname on the document won't match their current name.

This is not an insignificant problem.

According to surveys, roughly 70 percent of married women changed their last names. That translates to approximately 50 million women who are U.S. citizens but cannot rely on a birth certificate alone to prove citizenship.

The targeting of women in bills such as the SAVE Act is no accident. According to Pew, women lean Democratic by 9 points, while men lean Republican by 11 points — a 20-point gap.

But recent proposals by Republicans and their allies go beyond proving citizenship to register to vote. They demand that voters present proof of citizenship when they vote as well. That is why Mullin added the second part of his sentence — that REAL ID "does not give you the right to vote."

This is not an oversight...

Republicans would never admit that they are aware of the ramifications pointed out by Elias, but they know full well that the "election integrity" efforts being pushed by the Trump administration would disenfranchise a significant number of voters, mostly Democrats.

ERIC (Electronic Registration Information Center) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded in 2012, created by and comprised of state election officials from states that choose to join. ERIC is currently comprised of 26 member states plus the District of Columbia.

The mission statement on the ERIC website states:

ERIC's mission is to help states improve the accuracy of America's voter rolls, increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens, reduce election costs, and increase efficiencies in elections.

In an e-mail I received from Marc Elias (Democracy Docket) dated July 18, 2026, Elias said the following about ERIC:

For more than a decade, a bipartisan group of 32 states, plus Washington, D.C., maintained an interstate voter registration compact that facilitated the sharing of information. The Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, existed to improve the accuracy of state voter rolls by sharing information among member states.

For example, if a voter moved to a new state, that information would be shared to ensure the person was removed from the rolls in the state they moved from. Similarly, if a voter dies, every ERIC member state gets notified if the deceased person is still on their rolls.

It was, by nearly all accounts, a big success — earning praise from Democratic and Republican election officials alike. Those concerned about duplicate or fraudulent registrations were among its supporters.

That is, until right-wing lies began circulating about ERIC following the 2020 election.

Louisiana left in 2022. But the real exodus of GOP-led states came in 2023 when, not coincidentally, Donald Trump posted on social media that "All Republican Governors should immediately pull out of ERIC, the terrible Voter Registration System that 'pumps the rolls' for Democrats and does nothing to clean them up."

One by one, Republican states left ERIC — often over the strong objection of their own Republican election officials. Today, ERIC has only five Republican-controlled member states: Alaska, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Utah. Even that overstates GOP participation, since Kentucky has a Democratic governor.

The result has been predictable...

Read more about ERIC in a March 29, 2023 Democracy Docket article entitled "What Is the Voter Roll Organization ERIC?".

Why have so many Republican states dropped out of ERIC?

A June 20, 2023 article on the NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures) website entitled "More Withdrawals From Voter Data Group ERIC Likely" notes two possible reasons.

First, part of ERIC's mission is to "increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens." ERIC critics are suspicious that this outreach sometimes employs "questionable tactics" and is targeted to benefit Democratic-leaning demographics.

At one time 33 states were members of ERIC, which means it was made up of a significant number of both Red and Blue states. With that mix, explain to me how ERIC was showing bias towards Democrats? Didn't Red states have the same opportunities to reach out to Republican voters as Blue states did to Democratic voters? Party favoritism could have worked both ways, right?

Second, because some of the voter information ERIC collects comes from state motor vehicle departments, this creates a transparency conflict between the National Voter Registration Act and the federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act (read the article for a detailed explanation).

Looking at statistics (as of June 30, 2026) on the ERIC website, since it's inception in 2012 ERIC has identified 14,513,457 cross-state movers, accounted for 30,797,264 in-state updates, identified 1,435,383 in-state duplicates, and identified 675,003 voters. These numbers are significant, as are the statistics for the total number of potential new voters ERIC has identified (which you can see on the website).

ERIC is, and has been, one effective way of maintaining clean and accurate voter rolls.

Part of the Trump administration's "election integrity" efforts are a partial replacement for ERIC. The problem with those efforts is twofold.

First, the U.S. Constitution gives states the authority over "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives," NOT the federal government.

Second, the Trump administration consists almost entirely of election deniers. Do you think it's reasonable, or rational, or good for our democracy to allow people who can't even say that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, and who are hell-bent on retribution, to faithfully handle and process the voter rolls of every state in the U.S.?

If you answer yes, then surely you are an election denier and a Trump sycophant. You don't give a damn about objective reality and at the end of the day you really don't care about free and fair elections. All you care about is winning, and denying the results of an election if you lose.

In this section I analyze each of Trump's 15 claims. In addition to the embedded source links, I relied heavily on analysis from the following three sources:

Source:

Taylor, Miles. (June 17, 2026)"Here are the 10 ways Trump shot himself in the foot last night.". Defiance.org. Retrieved 2026-07-27.

Farley, Robert; Gore, D'Angelo; Robertson, Lori; Cuno-Booth, Paul; McDonald. Jessica. (June 17, 2026)"FactChecking Trump's Election Security Speech". FactCheck.org. Retrieved 2026-07-27.

Harding, Emily. (June 22, 2026)"What Do the Election Security Documents Say About Chinese Interference in U.S. Elections?". Center for Strategic and International Studies. Retrieved 2026-07-27.

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 1, Trump says there are "shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure" but he provides no evidence of widespread fraud. Vulnerabilities are one thing, evidence is another. Even the released documents clearly state that there is no evidence any votes were changed in the 2020 election.

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 2, Trump says China "fought like hell" to influence the 2020 election, but the released documents admit that China's efforts were "low-level." The documents also state that China deliberately avoided its "most aggressive options" because the Chinese government wanted to "minimize the risk of blowback."

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 3, the specific voter data Trump refers to is, for the most part, available for free in the form of public records or for purchase. The question becomes, what could China do with this data?

One of the declassified documents states that China used the data to conduct "public opinion analysis." Public opinion analysis (polling) is something that happens all the time with U.S. elections.

Is it possible that China could target individuals, or groups of individuals via social media with the data? Of course, assuming China was able to get associated e-mail addresses and social media account handles, but trying to sway public opinion during an election is nothing new. Intelligence had "high confidence" in the assessment that both Russia and Iran attempted to influence the 2020 election (Russia, in promoting Trump, and Iran, in promoting Biden).

Trump is concerned about China's influence in U.S. elections, but he doesn't say one word about the influence of his "Big Lie" on the American electorate, nor does he say anything about the influence of all the election misinformation spewed out by Trump/MAGA pundits and Trump/MAGA supporters on social media. Think about how all of THAT misinformation has influenced public opinion.

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 4, a document publicly released on March 16, 2021 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence entitled "Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections" lists five "key judgements" about foreign influence in the 2020 election, one of which reads.

We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy
influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US Presidential election.

In other words, there was nothing of substance for the "deep state" to actively suppress and downplay. To say that China's efforts were "sinister" is a gross exaggeration.

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 5, although intelligence related to the 2020 presidential election said foreign actors had the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure, it would be difficult to manipulate it on a wide enough scale to alter the outcome of the election. Intelligence also said that post-election audits and paper trails would most likely uncover such efforts.

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 6, my analysis of Trump's claim 4 shows that China's influence was so small that there would have been nothing of substance to "burn." Trump said that the findings in the "burn bags" are "stunning," and he said he will ask for an investigation into "how and why such crucial information was hidden," but he didn't say anything specific about what's contained in the "burn bags."

Trump is notorious for making claims like this, without providing a shred of evidence. He does this for political effect, knowing that in two weeks what he said will be forgotten (like he's done many times with claims about the supposed Trump/Republican replacement for Obamacare). Will an investigation actually take place? If it does, as American citizens can we trust the results of any such investigation?

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 7, the first key judgement of the "Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections" report reads.

We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.

In other words, Trump's claim that Americans were "blatantly lied to", even if it was true, didn't result in any harm done by foreign actors. As we know, Trump believes that domestic actors are at work, diligently trying to "rig" elections against him and Republicans. We also know that Trump and his MAGA sycophants still haven't proved any significant voter fraud. Once again, this is Trump making highly suspect claims, gaslighting, and lying in order to sow distrust in our elections.

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 8, it's important to note that although he was president of Venezuela from 2013 through 2026 (when he was captured by the U.S. government) Maduro did not run for reelection in 2020. In 2020, a parliamentary election was held in Venezuela, in which 27 opposition parties agreed not to participate arguing that the election was likely to be fraudulent. The European Union and the United States refused to recognize the results of the parliamentary vote.

According to a July 23, 2026 article on FactCheck.org entitled "Trump's Distorted Venezuela Elections Claim," Trump's claim about the plot to rig the 2020 elections is an "incomplete and distorted summary of the CIA's reporting about Venezuelan efforts to manipulate electronic voting machines."

According to a June 29, 2026 CIA report entitled "Summary of Select Intelligence Reporting from 2004-2020 on Venezuela's Electronic Voting Manipulation Capabilities," the CIA's assessment was that Venezuela's efforts to rig the election was more of a "theoretical" exercise. The report stops short of alleging that Venezuela actually carried out a plot to alter voting machine tallies. The report also says that Venezuela lacked the level of control or access required to manipulate the outcome of an election outside of Venezuela.

Regarding Trump's speech, claims 9-10, an August 14, 2023 article on the Bridge Michigan website entitled "Muskegon fake voter applications probed in 2020, referred to FBI, Nessel says" notes that fraudulent voter registration applications were intercepted before the election, an indication the "the system worked," and that the fraud did not affect the outcome of the election.

The case was turned over to the FBI in 2021, and according to a July 17, 2026 article on the Michigan Advance website entitled "Trump resurrects debunked Muskegon voter fraud allegations after prior investigations" it was closed on September 25, 2025 by the FBI Detroit, Grand Rapids Resident Agency.

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 11, Trump always exaggerates when it comes to numbers, so for him to say that the real number is "much higher than that" is no surprise. Until he backs up what he said with legitimate evidence, don't believe it.

A DHS document, referenced in the released documents, claims that a review of non-citizen voting in four states (California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Pennsylvania) discovered over 250,000 non-citizens illegally registered to vote. The document provides no information about how the 250,000 number was derived.

The document claims that as of June 22 (I assume of 2026), 25 states have used SAVE to identify 28,000 potential non-citizens on voter rolls (out of 68 million registration records), which, if accurate, would be about 0.04% of total voters. The 278,000 number Trump stated was arrived at by adding 28,000 to 250,000.

Nothing was said about the methodology used during Trump's speech or during Mullin's July 17 press conference. According to David Becker, founder of The Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), the Trump administration hasn't been very transparent about how it arrived at the 250,000 number. Becker attended a White House press briefing the afternoon before Trump's speech and all that was said during the briefing is that "commercial data" was used to arrive at the 250,000 number. Becker said that using this kind of data is not an accurate methodology, stating that 250,000 is "their wild highest possible number."

It's important to note that the SAVE program sometimes flags actual U.S. citizens as non-citizens. Read more about this in a March 30, 2026 FactCheck.org article entitled "Flaws in Government Tool to ID Noncitizen Voters."

Note that just because there are a small number of non-citizens registered to vote, that doesn't mean that all of them, or even a significant number of them, are actually voting.

Regarding Trump's speech, claim 12, this is a wildly gross exaggeration of the actual state of our election system. It only helps to further undermine confidence in our elections, but this is exactly what Trump wants. The less confidence Americans have, the more likely it is they will support all of Trump's bogus "election integrity" efforts.

Regarding Trump's speech, claims 13-16, Donald Trump is a pathological liar.

NBC News and ABC News chose not to televise the speech NOT for the reasons Trump gave, which are ridiculous and frankly insane, but because they knew his speech would be highly partisan and riddled with lies.

To suggest that NBC News and ABC News should lose their FCC licenses to broadcast is another example of the authoritarian nature of Trump and his administration. Media coverage, and in some cases the lack of it, has been an ongoing gripe of Trump's for a really long time. Just because you don't like what media says about you, or whether they choose or not choose to air your speeches, is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination justification for revoking a license to broadcast. That is censorship, and it has absolutely no place in American democracy.

Regarding the additional things Trump said, I agree with Trump that secure elections should be a non-partisan issue, but who has been the one person who not only started the election denial movement by saying the 2020 presidential election was "rigged" and "stolen," and then continued to say it countless times further stoking the fires of political division?

How can you expect non-partisanship on anything when Trump lies practically every time he opens his mouth?

Trump is the epitome of non-partisanship and political division, yet he has the audacity to mention it during his speech as a way of further vilifying his political opponents.

NOTHING Trump said in his speech would have changed the outcome of the 2020 election.

Trump is going to declare a "national emergency" regarding the upcoming mid-term elections.

One final point...

If you've read this entire post, congratulations! As you are now aware, election-related topics are very deep, dense, and complicated, and that's the way the Trump administration wants it.

Make no mistake, this is by design. Trump and his sycophants want you to be confused, bewildered, and overwhelmed, not only by the vast amount of information, but by the amount of time and energy it takes to really, REALLY understand it.

I take it one step further and say that Trump and his sycophants are using "shock and awe" tactics to try and instill fear into American citizens. Why? If you're confused and scared, you're much easier to manipulate.