Will Trump's primetime speech help him challenge the midterm elections?

**Sarah** (0:00)
Donald Trump has delivered a primetime speech from the White House, addressing the nation and telling them he thinks American elections are not safe. Newly declassified intelligence, he said, would show meddling elections past and the danger of elections in the future.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:16)
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.

**Sarah** (0:34)
Why is Donald Trump warning America now that he thinks that it's a danger of cheating and meddling in American elections? What's in it for him? And could it have something to do with the upcoming midterm elections? That's what we're going to dive into. Welcome to Americast.

**Anthony** (0:51)
Americast. Americast from BBC News.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:54)
You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:59)
We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it. This is a big cover-up and this administration is engaged in it.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:07)
This guy has Trump derangement syndrome.

**Anthony** (1:09)
I have four words for you.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:12)
Turn the volume up.

**Sarah** (1:19)
Hello, it's Sarah. I'm at home in Georgetown in Washington because it's just after 10 o'clock in the evening on Thursday night here.

**Anthony** (1:26)
It's Anthony. I am also at home here in Arlington, Virginia. Sarah, we were just together earlier tonight over cocktails, but now we're back to work and talking about Donald Trump's speech.

**Sarah** (1:37)
Yeah, because we both had to come home and watch Donald Trump giving an address to the nation that was, well, it was carried live on some television channels, not all of them, but he had billed this as a really important primetime speech where he was going to tell the nation about the ways in which American elections were being interfered with. There was some cynicism, I might say, Anthony, around Washington about whether or not he was going to produce any evidence or what kind of bombshell he would deliver.
He fell a wee bit short, I think, don't you?

**Anthony** (2:10)
Yeah, big, big news is the way he had touted it, and he did question the security of American elections. He made some allegations against China, accusing them of meddling in the 2018 midterms of the 2020 presidential election, saying they acquired voter data information. But he didn't present any evidence that ballots were tampered or that the results of the 2020 election or any elections had been, influence had been affected directly by China or any other country. So some of this was familiar, some of it was new, and we'll have to unpick a lot of the details of what he is providing. He says he's released these classified documents, but the top line is a lot of allegations, but not a lot of substance behind them.

**Sarah** (3:00)
Yeah, let's have a listen to some of the allegations that he was coming up with so that people can judge for themselves what he had to say.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:07)
Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of 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 US voter files. CIA reporting explicitly stated, and I quote, in mid 2018, The Chinese Communist Party's policy was to leverage all domestic and foreign elements that were opposed to the US president in an effort to reduce the US president's votes and make him resign or prevent his re-election. The third set of documents we are releasing proves that for many years Americans were blatantly lied to about the security of our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot counting systems, dishonest almost all. They're vulnerable and they're easily compromised and people within our government knew that. According to the DHS review, state voter rolls and public records, they identified approximately 278,000 non-citizens 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. But most importantly, addressing this crisis of election security demands that 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.

**Anthony** (5:07)
All right, Sarah, I think the first thing we need to say is that this is rare, a president addressing the nation in prime time, nine o'clock East Coast time, six o'clock out in California. This is a tool that presidents have that they don't use that often because of the power of it, speaking directly to Americans after they've come home from work, it's used to talk about issues of war and economic crises. Joe Biden came on after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Donald Trump has used it to talk about the start of the Iran military operations.