Good thing this is paywalled.
Guess the end of democracy isn’t enough of a crisis for a f*ing newspaper to let people find out about it without a subscription fee.
America may be dying but at least it’s dying doing what it loves - playing chicken with disaster for a quick buck while pretending nobody has any responsibility to anybody else.
Do you expect these journalists to work for free? Sure they could make the site ad supported but then you have to deal with that.
Trump Just Did More Damage to American Elections Than China His speech was a mash-up of charges that aren’t supported by the documents he released.
By Tom Nichols July 16, 2026
President Trump addressed the American people tonight and told them that their elections are at the mercy of foreign actors—especially China. He called the current situation a “crisis” and vowed to prevent any future elections from being “stolen.” He directed the public to a website where people can peruse documents that he says prove not only that bad actors have influenced U.S. elections, but that all of this was kept from him by “deep state” malefactors during his first term.
Foreign powers do, in fact, try to influence American elections, but that was about all that the president—who seems shocked that other nations have preferences about who wins elected office in the United States—got right. The rest was a mishmash: Much of the previously classified material that Trump just splattered on the internet does not support his accusations, and in some cases, these declassified documents actually undermine and refute his charges.
Trump’s speech tonight rested on a few solid facts submerged in wild, and even somewhat paranoid, extrapolations. It’s true that bad actors have accessed basic data about the names and addresses of voters in several states. It’s also true that China has some pretty strong views about Trump and probably didn’t want him to be reelected in 2020. (The Chinese wanted him out because, Trump said, “I was wise to them,” which does not explain how he was nonetheless hoodwinked.)
From there, however, we slip the surly bonds of Earth and head into the dark and cold of the space of conspiracy theories. Trump strongly implied that in 2018, China was on the attack and trying to influence the outcome of the 2020 election, and that American intelligence operatives plotted to keep that from him while he was in the Oval Office. He said that attempts to rectify all of this have fallen “catastrophically short” but that he will take “swift” action in the coming days.
The documents he offered tonight, though, tell a different story—so different that they raise the question of whether Trump, or anyone else in the White House, actually read them.
For example, one of the memos from the National Intelligence Council (the analytical group within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) said in 2020 that the group in charge of cyberissues and threats to U.S. elections “assesses that Beijing has taken at least some low-level, exploratory steps to undermine the President’s reelection chances by denigrating him and shaping voter perceptions.”
That sounds pretty bad. Except that (as often happens in the intelligence community) this group was representing a minority view, as it says in the very next sentence: “Their assessment differs from the IC’s judgment that Beijing has considered but not deployed influence efforts to affect the Presidential election.”
So, which is it? The IC (shorthand for intelligence community) seems to have reached a pretty firm judgment in these documents: “The IC,” one of the memos says (with some passages redacted),
has seen no evidence that Beijing is engaged in an effort to influence the outcome of the presidential election, nor has it observed activity that it assesses is likely the result of such an effort by Beijing. While we have seen Beijing develop other options that could be used to influence the election, we have not seen these capabilities deployed.
Note that what these documents discuss are influence operations—propaganda, proxies who speak for foreign interests, fake stories, and so on—rather than interference, which would involve actual manipulation of data or sabotaging of electoral infrastructure. These classified revelations, despite Trump’s assertions, show that the intelligence community didn’t even agree that China was fully engaged even in these more limited influence operations.
One document says, with more firmness, that the Chinese were attempting to undermine Trump’s chances and to pressure business partners into withdrawing support for the president’s reelection. This is perfectly plausible behavior from a U.S. adversary. Of course, Trump skipped over the part about other nations, including one where “senior officials” and their leader were seeking to “covertly influence US politicians’ and political candidates’ thinking” about the election.
That nation? Turkey.
On one point, however, the declassified reports are clear. One country, more than any other, actively engaged in operations against the 2020 election: Russia. And the Russians had a clear preference:
We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia establishment. For example, it is directing or encouraging proxies to spread claims about Vice President Biden. Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media.
This isn’t news, but Trump carefully cherry-picked his way around it. In charts provided by the White House itself that compare Russia, China, and Iran, only Russia is judged to be actively involved in such efforts.
Trump not only ignored these multiple (and much more categorical) judgments; he interpreted the normal in-house fighting that goes on every day in the intelligence community as evidence of some sort of plot against him. He made much of a comment in a group email—these conspirators were pretty relaxed about sending their nefarious ideas around to everyone—about “massaging” the President’s daily brief to take out references to the 2020 election. But the conversation was clearly about which product would include such issues, and how strongly the minority view would be stated. Like so much else in the speech and the documents, Trump threw everything he could find at the wall in the hope that some of it would stick.
So what, then, was the point of Trump’s speech? First, he is almost certainly trying to soothe his wounded ego over the 2020 election. He is obsessed with his loss to Biden and wants to blame it on foreign manipulation. But Trump might also have a darker motive, attacking the integrity of American elections because he wants to delegitimize the coming midterms—and perhaps even create the predicate for interfering in them.
The Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans, and many other enemies of the United States clearly hope to undermine the faith of every American citizen in their own elections. But no regime, no spies, no saboteurs have yet matched the damage that America’s own president did tonight.
If you read the documents, China did not interfere at all. They wanted Trump to be president and the American people did this all by themselves.
Voters doing absolutely nothing to stop a self serving grifter rapist insurrectionist with a stated intention to do, and past record of doing just that, kinda does that.
But try telling the sitouts that.
Yes that was the goal. And if he doesn’t get that bill passed (and frankly even it goes through) then Americans will be saying hello to his private army dragging people off at the polls. This has been predicted since day 1. The only thing this speech did was start getting his troops in motion. Everyone knows there was no proof of anything except the opposite of what he said in those documents, but that wasn’t the point because his cultists don’t read.
As an American, I can’t say that I ever felt threatened by China. But by American Confederates? Definitely.
The intelligent American, checking in. Thanks man. Tell your friends.
It’s always someone else’s fault.
Well yeah, because China didn’t damage them at all.
Archive link for no paywalls: https://removepaywalls.com/3/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/trump-address/687939/
He invented a threat to which the only solution is giving him more power.
You don’t have to even look at the details.
@minorkeys @inclementimmigrant ugh, that’s what they always do. Send “them” back to Germany where laws would likely take care of them and drag Ivana’s remains and send them to putin.
The CCP and PLA knew MAGA would weaken the USA and that is what they want. There are enough dumbfuck voters in the USA that will continue to guzzle down the shit from Moscow and Beijing.
America does American thing Americanly:
IT WAS THOSE GOD DAMN FOREIGNERS!!
Trump just did more damage to American elections than he did damage to Iran.
I remember when all this came out. Came out with the stuff about the Russian’s doing the same thing. Which if they called that the Russia hoax, and Russia was shown to be much more effective at it, what do we call this?
The research showed that the Chinese propoganda machine was super ineffective on American politics, but very effective on ethnically and nationally Chinese people, which is why they now have police stations all over the world which can capture and extradite Chinese people and Chinese national Uighars around the world.
This was reported as “conspiracy nonsense”, but if you know, you know:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/what-are-chinas-alleged-secret-overseas-police-stations
In Montreal, not New York City, or France:
As alleged in the complaint, Lu and Chen are charged with conspiring to act as agents of the PRC government as well as obstructing justice by destroying evidence of their communications with an MPS official. The defendants worked together to establish the first overseas police station in the United States on behalf of the Fuzhou branch of the MPS. The police station – which closed in the fall of 2022 after those operating it became aware of the FBI’s investigation – occupied a floor in an office building in Manhattan’s Chinatown. While acting under the direction and control of an MPS Official, Lu and Chen helped open and operate the clandestine police station. None of the participants in the scheme informed the U.S. government that they were helping the PRC government surreptitiously open and operate an illegal MPS police station on U.S. soil.
“The PRC, through its repressive security apparatus, established a secret physical presence in New York City to monitor and intimidate dissidents and those critical of its government,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The PRC’s actions go far beyond the bounds of acceptable nation-state conduct. We will resolutely defend the freedoms of all those living in our country from the threat of authoritarian repression.”
“Since early 2026, French counterintelligence services have dismantled nine clandestine structures operating in France under the direction of China’s Ministry of Public Security. The sites were notably used to track down dissidents.”
Your citing the pedophile billionaire oligarchy child sex trafficking rape government as a source?
Do we need to continue further?
“Monday, April 17, 2023”
Who was President in 2023? 😉
Citing the arrest documents of Chinese nationals operating an illegal police station to intimidate dissidents, thoroughly disproving your “debunked” link from a different city and country.
Take the “L”, move on, and don’t report comments you disagree with when they are materially factual.
Who was President in 2023?
A billionaire pedophile sex trafficking rapist??
I dunno what you think this is proof of lol, most of your government is in the Epstein files??
The fuck?
No, it’s proof you think Trump was President a year before he was relected and 2 years before he was actually President.
Have you considered changing your username to “confidentlywrong” instead of “Nonconfrontational”?
DEFINITELY more on brand.
Again, you lose sir, I award you no points.
Lmao
On which, that the Chinese effort wasn’t as effective on the general American populace as the Russian campaign, or the Chinese police stations? For the latter it’s related to the Safeguard report release in 2016 of which multiple governments confirmed the grand diaspora government program had created hundreds of non embassy 'service stations" that just happened to be related to credible reports of tracking and intimidation. Of which a dude was just convicted in the US for, when they went after him, him and his partner started burning shit like they were a Russian embassy.
Or the ineffective but present propoganda efforts by the prc that resulted in multiple news agencies being required to register as foreign agents in 2018 and an increase in IRA style social media campaigns around the covid pandemic.
I don’t trust any American government agency or their reports. Do you?
Always take it with a grain of salt! Don’t gotta trust us American pig dogs too much, you got French, English, German, Dutch. Man you name it they got it on the creepy NGO Chinese police “service stations”.
None of this is to say the Americans don’t do the same shit and worse, the American government mad at foreign interference by Chinese and Russians is like the fucking Spiderman meme.
Maybe you should have taken more than a grain.
Oooh, one Canadian senator did a speech with no link to the actual report, bet you had to dig to find this one!
Do you know what the RCMP are, lol?
He did no such thing. He just did what he’s been doing for the last 10 years and continued making more claims with no evidence.
Elections remain firmly in the control of states, for now. For exactly this reason.
Not true… There is evidence…He released documents that directly show Russian interference in the election on his behalf, and them being the source of the fake Biden/Burisma stuff.
So, just not evidence of what he claimed.
Ah, so we’re into the paranoid delusional phase of the dementia onset now. What fun!
Pretty sure China wouldn’t mind an utter imbecile as US president every single time.
That is a careful what you wish for.
Not so smart as to challenge competitively, but not so dumb as to think they can go bombing whoever they feel like to get their way.
I’m not wishing anything, just stating the obvious. And if anything, Trump has made it much much more likely that other countries will use force to fulfill their perceived interests. You’d have to be asleep not to realize it.
Perhaps I should have put it in quotes, “careful what you wish for” intended as the expression and “you” being China.
An imbecile is desirable in some ways to have the USA act against it’s own best interests making competitive interests easier, however when the imbecile goes and bombs Iran, that is a problem. And who knows what bone head move to screw things up for everyone comes next.
In some ways an imbecile is harder to predict and negotiate with.
I have some news about your past presidents…
You mean President Petar Stoyanov, from 1997-2002?!
Do tell me about my past presidents, dumbass.
Sorry for assuming, prick.
