For Trump’s base—of which 66% already believe the 2020 results were rigged—the night was a capstone confirmation of their suspicions that the system is so corrupt nothing can be trusted. Trump, with documents he said he declassified with the help of his spy chiefs, had finally cracked the case and proven that foreign actors put their thumb on the scales in an election that Trump lost.
Trump made some incredible claims that left viewers under the impression that hundreds of millions of Americans’ personal information had been hacked in 2020 by China in “the largest compromise of election data in history.”
So while China may have found out who could vote and, in many cases, if they were likely to show up based on elections they participated in and those they skipped, that alone is not enough to prove malfeasance. So while this may have been “unprecedented,” it was far from evidence that Beijing was doing anything unusual let alone nefarious.
… so is Washington’s relationship with Beijing
Complicating matters further is the late-September visit to Washington from Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Trump and Xi have a delicate relationship, one that may define the next century of geopolitical needs and turmoil. The White House, even before Trump’s speech, had started dialing back expectations for big breakthroughs for the summit in D.C. And the Trump posture toward China is as much about Xi as it is in regards to, frankly, the only other super power left on Planet Earth. An open feud between those two leaders—one that implicitly blames China, in part, on Trump’s defeat in 2020—is far from productive in the broader context.
Then there’s this wrinkle: in Trump’s final days in office, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe presented the findings of the nation’s spy organizations that, according to an unclassified version of them, there were no indications that any foreign actor—which would include China—attempted or succeeded in altering “any technical aspect” of the 2020 election vote. Ratcliffe is now running the CIA.
Under the current rules of the Senate, that legislation would need 60 affirmative votes. Republicans, when they’re all well enough to cast ballots and are in Washington, currently have 53 seats, meaning seven Democrats would have to sign onto the legislation that they almost uniformly reject.
It’s left plenty of lawmakers frustrated that Trump seems to be actively working against an already tricky electoral environment for the GOP to defend its narrow majorities. And on a practical level, it won’t actually affect votes this year but rather leave lawmakers exposed to criticism that they’re making it hard for older voters, communities of color, and rural voters to cast ballots.
“If I see a reconciliation bill come from the House with another failed attempt to confuse this election, I will use every device I have available to slow down the wheels of government until people cop a clue and do the math,” said Tillis.
Scary brings fear, but it’s not the whole story
But while there are, no doubt, kernels of truth to what Trump is saying, it’s likely a lot more nuanced when an objective reading of the newly declassified documents is applied. After all, it’s one thing to have a low-confidence observation in a file and it’s another to be a verified operation.
A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released during Trump’s first term outlined the extent of Russia’s disinformation campaign in 2016. But it’s not clear just how many votes Moscow’s meddling moved into Trump’s column—something his defenders have long pointed to.
And the newly declassified material released in part Thursday was enough to justify Trump’s innuendo that Venezuela too might have had a hand in 2020’s results—not because there was any proof that Venezuela’s since ousted leader Nicolás Maduro did anything in the U.S. but because he was able to do it in his country.
Trump’s gut fears are actually justified. It’s now understood that Russia in 2016 poked the election systems in all 50 states to check what protections were in place and accessed—but did not change—some very local registration rosters in Florida and Illinois. Two Iranians were indicted on charges they broke into Alaska’s voter system in 2020, although they were not accused of making any changes. In the Intelligence Community’s assessment, China tried to shape the narrative around Trump’s third campaign for the White House but not the actual vote counts. (The report also noted Cuba, Venezuela, and Hezbollah also ran small-scale efforts to weaken Trump’s return to power but concluded it was negligible.)
This presentation may backfire on Republicans
Certainly, the main headline from Trump’s base will be a guttural toldjaso. At face value, Trump’s speech left voters with the impression that Trump had finally blown open the vault of evidence that the Deep State had buried findings that the 2020 election was not on the up-and-up, foreign influence was everywhere in plain sight, and no one should really trust those results—or maybe even those happening in just a few months.
Presented with this new argument and buttressed by hand-picked evidence, that base is only going to further distrust the entire democratic process. Presented as chicanery, it’s tough to convince would-be voters that waiting in line to cast ballots is anything but a sucker’s game. Eroding confidence in the system may work for blaring claims that the Democrats (maybe) stole majorities in the House and Senate, but it’s bad for democracy and, perhaps more germane to Trump’s last two years in office, GOP turnout.
If Trump is going to avoid endless oversight hearings and maybe even a third impeachment, he needs some Republican cover. It’s mighty tough to do that if the Republicans only have a minority of either chamber. Trump may have felt good about his performance Thursday night, but he may end up regretting it the morning after Election Day if his base sits-out the balloting because Trump convinced them that voting is rigged and a waste of time.
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