5 highlights from Trump's address to the nation: China threat to elections, voter fraud
5. Trump talks next steps, calls for passage of the SAVE America Act
Trump closed the speech by summarizing what he characterized as the state of election integrity in the U.S. "Put together, these disclosures reveal an election system so broken and so vulnerable that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible," he said.
“Hundreds of millions of U.S. 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 noncitizens 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.”
Trump also criticized California's ballot-counting timeline, saying its primary took more than a month to be certified. "This is worse than any third-world country," he said. "Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen and the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue."
“Congress must pass the SAVE America Act,” Trump insisted. “This landmark bill requires that all voters must show photo voter ID.”
The president added that the legislation also requires voters to provide “proof of citizenship” and expressed hope that the final version of the bill would eliminate the widespread use of “corrupt mail-in ballots” and limit the use of absentee ballots to voters who are ill, disabled, deployed in the military or traveling. He pointed to California as evidence of how “mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt.”
“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,” he added. “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.”
Trump said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin would hold a press conference Friday “to outline his Department’s recent work confirming cyber vulnerabilities in our electronic voting systems."
He added, “We’re in the process of informing governors, senators and members of Congress of potential issues in their states. We’re also committing to working with those states and local jurisdictions to help them fix and patch known technical vulnerabilities before the midterm elections.”
Trump said he also ordered DHS to notify states about “noncitizens on their voter rolls and direct them to remove all ineligible voters from the lists immediately.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
