Thoughts on Trump's speech

Plenty of interesting claims, and fascinating what he did not claim

A few thoughts on the Trump speech:

First, if it’s true that federal law enforcement or intelligence agents/agencies intentionally withheld information about Chinese efforts to attack American elections (not necessarily by changing votes) AND if that information was at least assessed as being held with “moderate confidence” (or, obviously “high confidence”), that’s a big big deal. Don’t know if it’s criminal but it would be reprehensible and of course nobody involved should still be in federal employment IF it was as Trump described. But I suspect he’s wildly exaggerating and mischaracterizing ordinary processes. Also worth noting that Trump’s current head of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, was Director of National Intelligence at the time.

NOTE: Reporting in National Review overnight says that at least some of what Trump is claiming was withheld from him was actually “low confidence” information. Trump Alleges Sprawling Chinese Plot to Meddle in 2020 Election | National Review (gift link)

Trump made a LOT of claims about election vulnerabilities, but I think there were some significant weaknesses in his statements: First, he talks as if every state (or even every county within any one state) uses the same system, which isn’t true.

Second, he never made a single claim that any votes were changed by manipulating the operation/tabulation of voting machines.

Third, I suspect that the claimed roughly 250,000 non-citizen voter registrations in that handful of states will be found to be massively overstated BUT even so Trump did NOT make any claim about actual voting by non-citizens, which all studies I’m aware of show is vanishingly rare.

Fourth, if Trump is correct about the massive efforts of China to steal data, manipulate voter opinion, and perhaps even worse goals, he should have immediately stated that the planned summit with Xi Jinping was going to be put on hold. He also needs to STOP constantly complimenting Xi, as is Trump’s habit. By the way, it’s possible that Xi will pretend he’s offended and call off the summit so that they “save face” by looking like the ones taking the initiative. OR, China knows that Trump is massively exaggerating everything for his own domestic purposes and they try to ignore it, and Trump knows it too and continues with the summit and brings it up tangentially or not at all when talking with his good buddy, the Chinese president-for-life.

Also, he talked about China “hacking” and “stealing” voter registration data but that information is publicly available in many states, including in Colorado, though minor details differ on whether the data is free or comes at a small cost. Even in states where it’s not easily accessible or free information, it probably doesn’t take the world’s best hacker to get it nor is it the most sensitive information. Also there are “aggregators”, companies that legally acquire voter files from every state and then sell the data so you don’t need to be a hacker to get it. (In Colorado, you can buy the a voter list for $50 or subscribe for $1000 to a service that gives frequent updates on voter lists and other information.)

Overall, some of the claims in Trump’s speech were interesting and, as one pundit said on Leland Vittert’s show last night , “big if true”. I don’t particularly trust what Trump said and I suspect that most of it will be debunked or shown to be much less important than he suggested, but I don’t rule out that at least some of it could be right. Just probably not much that’s important, and maybe nothing that’s important to the ordinary American voter even if Steve Bannon thinks it’s red meat for the base. Again, it was remarkable that not once did he claim that any votes were actually changed, and only once did he mention a stolen election. So, to the extent that he was talking about 2020, he didn’t make it as personal, as much about his own grievances as he had in the past, which was wise. But that doesn’t make it a good speech.

I think Trump is right that it’s critical that Americans trust our election systems. He went a long way in the opposite direction yesterday, blowing a lot of smoke intended to get people NOT to trust our systems. That said, he’s also claiming that the systems really aren’t trustworthy. In either case, I welcome the federal government working with states to try to patch any potential system vulnerabilities. If the systems are truly at risk (which I doubt in almost every case), they should be fixed. If they’re not, that should be widely publicized as well. Because it is absolutely true that belief in honest elections is a very close second in importance to the integrity of the elections themselves. If we have honest elections but nobody believes they are, that’s the stuff of revolution (and that’s obviously also true if elections aren’t honest and people know it.)

A couple of quick tactical things: I thought it was a minor mistake for Trump to start the speech with a boring laundry list of claims such as what one might make on the campaign trail, and he should have spent more time on Iran.

Finally, as I suggested when filling in for Guy Benson today, the decision by ABC News and NBC News not to carry the speech is likely (because Trump complained about it) to attract some negative unwelcome attention by @FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and threats against the networks.