Trump gives primetime speech on elections as White House alleges Chinese access to voter data

Claim by President Trump: "Mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt. So [under elections legislation he supports] you would have no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military deployment, or travel, if you're going away on business or vacation. These reforms are urgently needed to stop the vulnerabilities that I've mentioned."

Rating: False

Details: There is no evidence of widespread mail-in ballot fraud in states where no-excuse absentee or universal vote-by-mail is offered. 

Multiple studies have shown that instances of voter fraud are very rare and not significant enough to impact the result of an election. The Brookings Institution found an "average total mail voting fraud percentage across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections of only 0.000043%, or about four cases of mail voting fraud out of every 10 million mail votes."

While absentee voting expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has a long history of mail-in ballots — their use started during the Civil War. In 2024, USPS processed 99.2 million ballots in the general election beginning Sept. 1, 2024.

The president has long tried to discredit mail-in ballots, and in 2020 campaigned against their use. He continued his attack on mail-in ballots into 2026, calling for limits to mail-in ballots through the SAVE America Act.

The president himself used mail-in voting very recently. Earlier in 2026, he voted by mail in a Florida special election, explaining that "I couldn't be there, because I had a lot of different things," The president was in Palm Beach one of the weekends when early voting was available.

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Claim by President Trump: "Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens and dead people are listed and active on the voter rolls." 

Rating: Exaggerated

Details: Election experts say votes cast on behalf of "dead people" are extremely rare, and the numbers are unlikely to affect the outcome of an election. 

For example, The North Carolina State Board of Elections announced in April that it had identified "34,000 deceased individuals" on the state's voter rolls. However, the Board stated that the identification of those individuals on the state's voter rolls "does not necessarily indicate that illegal votes were cast in their names."

Non-citizen voting in U.S. elections is also exceedingly rare. The Center for Election Innovation & Research concluded that non-citizens voting in U.S. elections "arise from misunderstandings, mischaracterizations, or outright fabrications," and once an investigation by an individual state's secretary of state is concluded, "the number of alleged instances falls drastically."

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate revealed in March 2025 that the state had estimated 2,186 non-citizens registered to vote. But after a state-wide audit, the number dropped to "277 confirmed non-citizens." Of those, only 35 voted in the 2024 election.

Mr. Trump said Thursday a Department of Homeland Security review of state voter rolls and public records determined that approximately 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in federal elections.

Center for Election Innovation & Research Executive Director David Becker said: "We should take that with a great big grain of salt because the administration has not shown its work with regard to these at all."

"That's based on using commercial data that cannot be used. It's going to create a ton of false positives. I guarantee you, that data includes a ton of people, maybe even a majority of people, who are absolutely eligible voters, and states would probably be breaking the law if they remove those voters from the rolls," Becker said. 

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"The idea that somehow these countries are gathering voter files, these are publicly available. You don't have to hack into them. You can buy them," he said in an interview with CBS News, adding that other countries and "virtually every American company" buys voter files.  

Warner also questioned why Mr. Trump did not mention Russia or Iran during his 25-minute speech. Both countries have engaged in similar efforts, with Russia seeking to promote the Trump campaign and Iran trying to denigrate the Trump campaign in 2020.

Claim by President Trump: "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. Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard."

Rating: False

Details: Officials from both parties have repeatedly said election infrastructure remains secure.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said there was "no evidence of any malicious activity" affecting the integrity of the 2024 elections. CISA also said the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history," with no evidence that voting systems deleted, lost or compromised votes. 

Georgia and Pennsylvania conducted audits of the 2024 general election and officials in both states confirmed the accuracy of election results.

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Raising his voice, Mr. Trump declared at one point in his speech: "Congress must pass the SAVE America Act." 

"This landmark bill requires that all voters must show photo voter ID," he said. "All voters must provide proof of citizenship." 

The president has pushed Congress for months to pass the controversial voting regulations bill that would implement strict new requirements for registering to vote and casting ballots, which critics have warned would disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. 

The SAVE America Act would require voters to show proof in-person of U.S. citizenship, like a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote in federal elections. The measure also has a requirement that voters show a photo ID to cast a ballot. The photo ID must also contain proof of citizenship, according to the measure.

The House has passed various versions of the legislation and has vowed to attach it to other must-pass measures before sending them to the Senate. However, the voting regulations bill lacks even a simple majority of support in the Senate. 

But Mr. Trump also wants the measure to go further and include a ban on mail-in voting, except in certain circumstances like illness, disability, military deployment or travel, along with restrictions on transgender athletes participating in women's sports. 

In his speech, Mr. Trump urged Americans to call their members of Congress and "demand that they pass the SAVE America Act without delay." 

"These reforms are urgently needed to stop the vulnerabilities that I've mentioned," he said. 

Mr. Trump said his administration was working to mitigate the fallout of China's alleged access to voter data — much of which is publicly available — and is in "the process of informing governors, senators and members of Congress of potential issues in their states." 

"My administration is in the process of notifying the states whose election data was compromised by the People's Republic of China and many others," Mr. Trump said, adding that they are "taking swift action to ensure that sensitive voter data is better protected."  

The president also said Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin is set to hold a briefing Friday to outline the department's work looking into cyber vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems. 

"We're also committing to be working with those states and local jurisdictions to help them fix and patch known technical vulnerabilities before the midterm elections," he said. "I've also ordered DHS to notify every state about noncitizens on their voter rolls and direct them to remove all ineligible voters from the lists immediately." 

After President Trump alleged China has accessed hundreds of millions of voter registration files, Center for Election Innovation & Research Executive Director David Becker noted that the data is publicly available — and there isn't much that China can do with it to meddle in an election.

"It sounds bad when you hear about it," said Becker, who is also a CBS News election law contributor. "The reality is: voter files in the United States are public."

Some states — including Ohio and North Carolina — post the data online for free, Becker noted, and the state of California allows people to obtain it for $100. The data is widely used by political parties and campaigns for voter outreach and other purposes, and Becker says many election experts assumed that foreign states might have access, too.

Also: "There's nothing that anyone can actually do with that information," Becker added, noting that China would not be able to change voter registration data or vote on people's behalf.

"I might have the entire class list for a college or university, but that doesn't mean I can go in and change the grades," he said. "That's what's happening here."

Beginning in 2020, 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. voter files," Mr. Trump alleged, citing newly declassified documents.

He said the information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences and other "sensitive" data needed to register to vote. He called it "an unprecedented election security nightmare." 

Mr. Trump said "those responsible for sounding the alarm instead kept the information secret and hidden," adding that it was not disclosed to him or "anyone else," including Congress. 

The president did not specify how China gained access to the data, but voter registration data is often publicly available. For example, North Carolina makes it available on its website. Access to that data does not necessarily allow a user to interfere with the results of an election.

Also, at least two declassified intelligence assessments that were compiled during Mr. Trump's first term show that the federal government was aware of China's efforts to gather information about U.S. voters. 

According to a declassified intelligence community assessment, that was provided to the president, senior Executive Branch officials and members of Congress on Jan. 7, 2021, Beijing "probably also continued longstanding efforts to gather information on US voters and public opinion; political parties, candidates and their staffs; and senior government officials." The document also said China "probably sought to use this information to predict electoral outcomes and to inform its efforts to influence US policy toward China under either election outcome, as it has during all election cycles since at least 2008 and considers an acceptable tool of statecraft."

Another assessment from April 7, 2020, said that Chinese intelligence officials had analyzed bulk election voter registration data from multiple U.S. states, apparently to support public opinion analysis related to the 2020 general election. That assessment was declassified in 2022 but remains heavily redacted.

President Trump said some of the newly declassified documents the White House released on its website late Thursday suggest China "fought like hell" to prevent him from winning in 2020.

The National Intelligence Council publicly assessed shortly after the 2020 election that China stayed on the sidelines of the race, choosing not to back either Joe Biden or Mr. Trump. But the NEC's report noted a "minority view" by one intelligence official that China did try to denigrate Mr. Trump. 

But all intelligence agencies — including the dissenting official — found that China did not attempt to interfere with technical aspects of the 2020 election, like vote-counting or the casting of ballots.

"The Chinese government wanted [the] U.S. president to lose the next election, and the reason they wanted me to lose is because they knew I was wise to them," the president said.

Mr. Trump did not kick off his speech talking about election integrity, but rather by spending several minutes talking about how much progress he argues the country has made since he returned to the White House. 

He talked about crime rates, border security, the economy and other topics. 

"But we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed," he said, before shifting to elections. 

President Trump's speech has begun.

Mr. Trump was expected during his speech to reveal newly declassified information on intelligence on elections, which include five main revelations, according to a White House official. Hundreds of pages of documents will be released publicly.

The materials covered by Mr. Trump were not expected to include any allegations that actual votes were changed or machines were hacked in the 2020 election, the official said. 

The official said the president will allege that 220 million voter registration files were "compromised" by China between 2020 and 2023. The files included information such as voters' names, addresses, voting history, party affiliation, military status and phone numbers.

Voting records are often public and available commercially, and access to public voter data does not necessarily allow people to commit fraud. For example, North Carolina posts its data online. A 2020 intelligence report declassified four years ago found China had obtained multiple states' voter registration data "to conduct public opinion analysis on the 2020 US general election."

Mr. Trump was also likely to draw attention to alleged voting machine vulnerabilities, a questionable voter registration scheme in Michigan that was not prosecuted, non-citizens registering to vote and software patches that can be done to enhance security ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

The president is also expected to touch on insufficient information-sharing within the government about some of the alleged voting vulnerabilities.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., issued a statement ahead of President Trump's speech stating that it has not interfered in elections.

"China has all along adhered to the principle of non-interference in other's internal affairs," the statement read. "The U.S. election is an internal matter of the U.S. Its outcome is determined by the votes of the American people. China has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S."

Rep. Ro Khanna of California, the top Democrat on the House China Committee, questioned Mr. Trump's intent in giving a primetime address that is expected to include intelligence on China. 

In a letter to the president on Thursday that cited reporting about the speech and related materials, Khanna said the address "appears to be another attempt to disrupt our democracy." 

The lawmaker said "it is the Executive Branch's responsibility to keep me informed of significant developments related to China."

"However, as of the date of the transmittal of this letter, I have neither been offered nor received any briefing from the Executive Branch regarding the reported content of your speech. I hope the reports about your speech and its false claims, and your potential intention to use China as a pretext for an executive order, are inaccurate," Khanna wrote. 

"The Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on China should not be learning about the potential declassification of intelligence about China — regardless of the subject matter — from the news," he said. 

Mr. Trump has made the SAVE America Act his top legislative priority. The president and his allies in Congress have held other items on the GOP's agenda hostage over Senate Republicans' inability to pass the voting regulations bill. 

The bill would implement strict new requirements for registering to vote and casting ballots, which critics have warned would disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. 

The SAVE America Act would require voters to show proof in person of U.S. citizenship, like a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote in federal elections. The measure also has a requirement that voters show a photo ID to cast a ballot. The photo ID must also contain proof of citizenship, according to the measure.

The House has passed various versions of the legislation and has vowed to attach it to other must-pass measures before sending them to the Senate. However, the voting regulations bill lacks even a simple majority of support in the upper chamber. 

Mr. Trump also wants to add other Republican priorities to the measure, like bans on mail-in voting and transgender athletes' participation in women's sports. 

Republicans have touted the measure as a reasonable way to prevent noncitizens from casting ballots, though instances of noncitizens voting are exceedingly rare.

When U.S. intelligence agencies look at attempts by foreign countries to meddle in elections, they draw a distinction between "election influence" and "election interference."

Election influence covers attempts by foreign governments to affect who voters decide to vote for, including by promoting or denigrating certain candidates, spreading false claims or sowing distrust. Election interference includes attempts to alter technical parts of the election process, like the casting of ballots, the vote-counting process or voter registrations.

In early 2021, the National Intelligence Council found that several countries attempted to influence the 2020 race without interfering in election processes. Russia tried to undermine the Biden campaign, Iran tried to undermine the Trump campaign, and Venezuela, Hezbollah and Cuba may have tried some smaller-scale strategies to denigrate Mr. Trump.

But the National Intelligence Council found "no indications" that foreign countries "attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process" during the 2020 election, including ballot-casting, vote-counting or registrations. 

Experts have long argued it would be extremely difficult for anybody to pull off election interference at a large scale since U.S. elections are heavily decentralized, with thousands of counties and cities responsible for registering voters, running polling places and counting votes.

"We assess that it would be difficult for a foreign actor to manipulate election processes at scale without detection by intelligence collection on the actors themselves, through physical and cyber security monitoring around voting systems across the country, or in post-election audits," the National Intelligence Council said in a 2021 report.

The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security also found in 2021 that there was "no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor prevented voting, changed votes, or disrupted the ability to tally votes or to transmit election results in a timely manner."

The question of China's involvement in the 2020 election has been the topic of some debate — but U.S. intelligence agencies have said China didn't try to interfere in the election on a technical level.

In early 2021, most of the U.S. intelligence community assessed that China did not try to influence the outcome of the election, with Beijing deciding neither a Biden nor a Trump victory was "advantageous enough for China to risk getting caught meddling." While China has tried to influence U.S. politics to promote its view of the world, it stayed on the sidelines of the 2020 race, according to a March 2021 report by the National Intelligence Council.

But the report notes a "minority view" from the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber, who believed China did take at least some steps to "undermine" the Trump campaign, largely through social media posts, official statements and other influence campaigns.

However, the entire intelligence community — including the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber — agreed that China did not "interfere with election infrastructure, including vote tabulation or the transmission of election results."

Separately, the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber found in April 2020 that Chinese intelligence "analyzed multiple U.S. states' … election voter registration data," according to a report that was declassified in 2022 but is heavily redacted. The goal was to "conduct public opinion analysis on the 2020 U.S. general election."

It isn't clear how China accessed the voter data or how sensitive it was. In many states, voter registration information is available to the public or can be purchased, and if China obtained voter data, it doesn't mean election processes were impacted.

President Trump has never acknowledged that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020, and has long insisted the election was riven with fraud — though no evidence has emerged of fraud on a scale necessary to change the outcome of the election.

Shortly after the election, the Trump campaign and its allies filed dozens of lawsuits challenging votes in virtually every swing state, almost all of which were rejected. Then-Attorney General William Barr also said prosecutors and FBI agents didn't find evidence of widespread fraud.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called the 2020 election "the most secure in American history" and noted: "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."

Several key states also conducted their own audits and investigations in the years following the 2020 election, and did not uncover evidence of sweeping voter fraud.