Trump Says China Influenced 2020 Election, News Outlets Push Back

President Trump on Thursday night gave a prime-time address focused largely on elections and election security. While outlets on the right generally reported Trump's claims as he made them, outlets in the center and on the left emphasized his election fraud allegations were false.

The Details: During the 25-minute speech, Trump declassified intelligence that he said involved "shocking vulnerabilities" which showed Chinese interference in US elections. According to the documents, China had illicitly acquired 220 million US voter files, including names, addresses and other information used to vote. CNN (Lean Left bias), ABC (Lean Left) and NBC (Lean Left) didn't provide live coverage of the speech, leading Trump to suggest they should have their broadcast licenses revoked.

More Secure Elections: Fox News (Right) emphasized Trump's argument for tighter election security. It reported that the findings showed China engaged in an influence campaign aimed at shaping US public opinion, also noting other documents focused on "Michigan voter-registration investigation and noncitizens on state voter rolls." The outlet said the speech comes as the Trump administration has pushed for the SAVE act and other policies "to secure U.S. elections." Townhall (Right) said the revelation was "something we all suspected" about the 2020 election and "highlight[s] major areas of concern." It also included Trump's suggestion that the information was covered up by "the Deep State" and kept hidden from Trump.

Previous Investigations: Reuters (Center) reported Trump's allegations contradict an unclassified 2021 US intelligence assessment that found no indications any foreign actor attempted to alter or succeeded in altering the 2020 presidential election. According to Reuters, the report also found China had pursued an effort dating to at least 2008 to collect information on US voters, public opinion, political parties, ​candidates and top government officials, which it said was likely intended to predict election results.

Past Election Fraud Claims: Outlets on the left and in the center emphasized Trump's election fraud claims were unsubstantiated. Reuters said the speech "underscored Trump's effort to make election security a central political issue ahead of November's midterm elections." New York Times (Lean Left) described Trump's claims as "outlandish" and said he "exaggerated claims about election vulnerabilities" by "[drawing] selectively from documents…to insinuate that US elections have been compromised for years."

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